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 continuous string of memory
an uninterrupted series of instantaneous visions,
which would be a part of things rather than of
ourselves. That this is the chief office of con
sciousness in external perception is indeed
what we may deduce a priori from the very defini
tion of living bodies. For though the function
of these bodies is to receive stimulations in order
to elaborate them into unforeseen reactions, still
the choice of the reaction cannot be the work of
chance. This choice is likely to be inspired by
past experience, and the reaction does not take
place without an appeal to the memories which
analogous situations may have left behind them.
The indetermination of acts to be accomplished
requires then, if it is not to be confounded with
pure caprice, the preservation of the images per
ceived. It may be said that we have no grasp of
the future without an equal and corresponding
70 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
outlook over the past, that the onrush of our
activity makes a void behind it into which memories
flow, and that memory is thus the reverbera
tion, in the sphere of consciousness, of the inde-
termination of our will. But the action of memory
goes further and deeper than this superficial
glance would suggest. The moment has come
to reinstate memory in perception, to correct
in this way the element of exaggeration in our
conclusions, and so to determine with more
precision the point of contact between con
sciousness and things, between the body and
the spirit.
We assert, at the outset, that if there be memory,
that is, the survival of past images, these images
must constantly mingle with our percep-
Perception is . r .
less objective tion of the present, and may even take its
in fact than in _.-. . -, . .
theory because place. For if they have survived it is with
it includes .
a share oi a view to utility : at every moment they
memory. . .
complete our present experience, enrich
ing it with experience already acquired ; and, as the
latter is ever increasing, it must end by covering up
and submerging the former. It is indisputable that
the basis of real, and so to speak instantaneous,
intuition, on which our perception of the external
world is developed, is a small matter compared
with all that memory adds to it. Just because
the recollection of earlier analogous intuitions
is more useful than the intuition itself, being
bound up in memory with the whole series of
subsequent events, and capable thereby of throw-
CHAP, i PURE PERCEPTION 71
ing a better light on our decision, it supplants the
real intuition of which the office is then merely
we shall prove it later to call up the recollection,
to give it a body, to render it active and thereby
actual. We had every right, then, to say that
the coincidence of perception with the object
perceived exists in theory rather than in fact.
We must take into account that perception ends
by being merely an occasion for remembering,
that we measure in practice the degree of reality
by the degree of utility, and, finally, that it
is our interest to regard as mere signs of the
real those immediate intuitions which are, in
fact, part and parcel with reality. But here we
discover the mistake of those who say that to
perceive is to project externally unextended
sensations which have been drawn from our
own depths, and then to develop them in space.
They have no difficulty in showing that our com
plete perception is filled with images which belong
to us personally, with exteriorized (that is to say
recollected) images ; but they forget that an
impersonal basis remains in which perception
coincides with the object perceived; and which
is, in fact, externality itself.
The capital error, the error which, passing over
from psychology into metaphysic, shuts us out
in the end from the knowledge both of
Pure peroep- M. AI_ T_- u
tion and pure body and of spirit, is that which sees
constantly only a difference of intensity, instead
of a difference of nature, between pure
72 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
perception and memory. Our perceptions are un
doubtedly interlaced with memories, and inversely,
a memory, as we shall show later, only becomes
actual by borrowing the body of some perception
into which it slips. These two acts, perception
and recollection, always interpenetrate each other,
are always exchanging something of their sub
stance as by a process of endosmosis. The proper
office of psychologists would be to dissociate
them, to give back to each its natural purity ;
in this way many difficulties raised by psychology,
and perhaps also by metaphysics, might be les
sened. But they will have it that these mixed
states, compounded, in unequal proportions, of
pure perception and pure memory, are simple.
And so we are condemned to an ignorance
alike of pure memory and of pure perception;
to knowing only a single kind of phenomenon
which will be called now memory and now per
ception, according to the predominance in it of
one or other of the two aspects ; and, con
sequently, to finding between perception and
memory only a difference in degree and not in
kind. The first effect of this error, as we shall
see in detail, is to vitiate profoundly the theory
of memory ; for if we make recollection
merely a weakened perception we misunderstand
the essential difference between the past and the
present, we abandon all hope of understanding
the phenomena of recognition, and, more gener
ally, the mechanism of the unconscious. But, in-
CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 73
versely, if recollection is regarded as a weakened
perception, perception must be regarded as a
stronger recollection. We are driven to argue as
though it was given to us after the manner of a
memory, as an internal state, a mere modification
of our personality ; and our eyes are closed to the
primordial and fundamental act of perception,
the act, constituting pure perception, whereby we
place ourselves in the very heart of things. And
thus the same error, which manifests itself in
psychology by a radical incapacity to explain the
mechanism of memory, will in metaphysics pro
foundly influence the idealistic and realistic
conceptions of matter.
For realism, in fact, the invariable order of the
phenomena of nature lies in a cause distinct from
our perceptions, whether this cause must remain
unknowable, or whether we can reach it by an
effort (always more or less arbitrary) of meta
physical construction. For the idealist, on the
contrary, these perceptions are the whole of
reality, and the invariable order of the phenomena
of nature is but the symbol whereby we express,
alongside of real perceptions, perceptions that are
possible. But, for realism as for idealism, percep
tions are veridical hallucinations/ states of the
subject, projected outside himself ; and the two
doctrines differ merely in this : that in the one
these states constitute reality, in the other they
are sent forth to unite with it.
But behind this illusion lurks yet another that
74 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
extends to the theory of knowledge in general. We
have said that the material world is made
philosophy up of objects, or, if you prefer it, of
dissociate images, of which all the parts act and
react upon each other by movements. And
that which constitutes our pure perception
is our dawning action, in so far as it is pre
figured in those images. The actuality of
our perception thus lies in its activity, in the
movements which prolong it, and not in its
greater intensity: the past is only idea, the
present is ideo-motor. But this is what our
opponents are determined not to see, because
they regard perception as a kind of contempla
tion, attribute to it always a purely speculative
end, and maintain that it seeks some strange
disinterested knowledge ; as though, by isolating
it from action, and thus severing its links with the
real, they were not rendering it both inexplicable
and useless. But thenceforward all difference
between perception and recollection is abolished,
since the past is essentially that which acts no longer,
and since, by misunderstanding this characteristic
of the past, they become incapable of making a
real distinction between it and the present, i.e. that
which is acting. No difference but that- of
mere degree will remain between perception and
memory ; and neither in the one nor in the other
will the subject be acknowledged to pass beyond
himself. Restore, on the contrary, the true char
acter of perception ; recognize in pure perception a
CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 75
system of nascent acts which plunges roots deep
into the real ; and at once perception is seen to be
radically distinct from recollection ; the reality
of things is no more constructed or recon
structed, but touched, penetrated, lived ; and the
problem at issue between realism and idealism,
instead of giving rise to interminable metaphysical
discussions, is solved, or rather dissolved by
intuition.
In this way also we shall plainly see what
position we ought to take up between idealism
it might an d realism, which are both condemned
kun g g etan to see in matter only a construc-
naSreo? 8 ^ on or a reconstruction executed by
matter - the mind. For if we follow out to the
end the principle according to which the
subjectivity of our perception consists, above
all, in the share taken by memory, we shall say
that even the sensible qualities of matter would
be known in themselves, from within and not from
without, could we but disengage them from that
particular rhythm of duration which characterizes
our consciousness. Pure perception, in fact,
however rapid we suppose it to be, occupies a
certain depth of duration, so that our successive
perceptions are never the real moments of things,
as we have hitherto supposed, but are moments
of our consciousness. Theoretically, we said, the
part played by consciousness in external perception
would be to join together, by the continuous
thread of memory, instantaneous visions of
76 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
the real. But, in fact, there is for us nothing that
is instantaneous. In all that goes by that name
there is already some work of our memory, and
consequently of our consciousness, which prolongs
into each other, so as to grasp them in one relatively
simple intuition, an endless number of moments
of an endlessly divisible time. Now what is,
in truth, the difference between matter as the
strictest realism might conceive it, and the per
ception which we have of it ? Our perception
presents us with a series of pictorial, but discon
tinuous, views of the universe ; from our present
perceptions we could not deduce subsequent
perceptions, because there is nothing in an
aggregate of sensible qualities which foretells
the new qualities into which they will change.
On the contrary, matter, as realism usually
posits it, evolves in such a manner that we can
pass from one moment to the next by a mathe
matical deduction. It is true that, between this
matter and this perception, scientific realism can
find no point of contact, because it develops
matter into homogeneous changes in space, while
it contracts perception into unextended sensa
tions within consciousness. But, if our hypo
thesis is correct, we can easily see how perception
and matter are distinguished, and how they
coincide. The qualitative heterogeneity of our
successive perceptions of the universe results from
the fact that each, in itself, extends over a certain
depth of duration, and that memory condenses
CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 77
in each an enormous multiplicity of vibrations
which appear to us all at once, although they are
successive. If we were only to divide, ideally, this
undivided depth of time, to distinguish in it the
necessary multiplicity of moments, in a word to
eliminate all memory, we should pass thereby from
perception to matter, from the subject to the object.
Then matter, becoming more and more homo
geneous as our extended sensations spread them
selves over a greater number of moments, would
tend more and more towards that system of homo
geneous vibrations of which realism tells us, al
though it would never coincide entirely with them.
There would be no need to assume, on the one
hand, space with unperceived movements, and,
on the other, consciousness with unextended
sensations. Subject and object would unite in
an extended perception the subjective side of
perception being the contraction effected by
memory, and the objective reality of matter fusing
with the multitudinous and successive vibrations
into which this perception can be internally
broken up. Such at least is the conclusion which,
we hope, will issue clearly from the last part of
this essay. Questions relating to subject and object,
to their distinction and their union, should be put
in terms of time rather than of space.
But our distinction between pure perception
and pure memory has yet another aim. Just
as pure perception, by giving us hints as to the
78 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
nature of matter, allows us to take an intermediate
position between realism and idealism, so pure
memory, on the other hand, by opening to us a
view of what is called spirit, should enable us to
decide between those other two doctrines, mater
ialism and spiritualism. 1 Indeed it is this aspect
of the subject which will first occupy our atten
tion in the two following chapters, because it
is in this aspect that our hypothesis allows some
degree of experimental verification.
For it is possible to sum up our conclusions as
to pure perception by saying that there is in matter
AS also of the something more than, but not something
spirit. different from, that which is actually
given. Undoubtedly conscious perception does not
compass the whole of matter, since it consists,
in as far as it is conscious, in the separation, or the
discernment, of that which, in matter, interests
our various needs. But between this perception
of matter and matter itself there is but a differ
ence of degree and not of kind, pure perception
standing towards matter in the relation of the
part to the whole. This amounts to saying that
matter cannot exercise powers of any kind other
than those which we perceive. It has no mys
terious virtue, it can conceal none. To take a
definite example, one moreover which interests
us most nearly, we may say that the nervous
1 The word spiritualism is used throughout this work
to signify any philosophy that claims for spirit an existence
of its own. (Translators note.)
CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 79
system, a material mass presenting certain quali
ties of colour, resistance, cohesion, etc., may
well possess unperceived physical properties, but
physical properties only. And hence it can have
no other office than to receive, inhibit, or transmit
movement.
Now the essence of every form of materialism
is to maintain the contrary, since it holds that
consciousness, with all its functions, is born of
the mere interplay of material elements. Hence it
is led to consider even the perceived qualities
of matter, sensible, and consequently felt, quali
ties, as so many phosphorescences which follow
the track of the cerebral phenomena in the act of
perception. Matter, thus supposed capable of
creating elementary facts of consciousness, might
therefore just as well engender intellectual facts
of the highest order. It is, then, of the essence
of materialism to assert the perfect relativity of
sensible qualities, and it is not without good
reason that this thesis, which Democritus has
formulated in precise terms, is as old as
materialism.
But spiritualism has always followed mater
ialism along this path. As if everything lost to
matter must be gained by spirit, spiritualism has
never hesitated to despoil matter of the qualities
with which it is invested in our perception, and
which, on this view, are subjective appearances.
Matter has thus too often been reduced to a
mysterious entity which, just because all we
8O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
know of it is an empty show, might as well
engender thought as any other phenomenon.
The truth is that there is one, and only one,
method of refuting materialism : it is to show
that matter is precisely that which it appears to be.
Thereby we eliminate all virtuality, all hidden
power, from matter, and establish the phenomena
of spirit as an independent reality. But to do
this we must leave to matter those qualities
which materialists and spiritualists alike strip
from it : the latter that they may make of them
representations of the spirit, the former that they
may regard them only as the accidental garb of
space.
This, indeed, is the attitude of common sense
with regard to matter, and for this reason com
mon sense believes in spirit. It seems to us
that philosophy should here adopt the attitude
of common sense, although correcting it in one
respect. Memory, inseparable in practice from
perception, imports the past into the present,
contracts into a single intuition many moments
of duration, and thus by a twofold operation com-
pells us, de facto, to perceive matter in ourselves,
whereas we, de jure, perceive matter within matter.
Hence the capital importance of the problem
of memory. If it is memory above all that lends
to perception its subjective character,
cardinal " the philosophy of matter must aim
te P pro Sem in the first instance, we said, at elimina
ting the contributions of memory. We
CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 8l
must now add that, as pure perception gives us
the whole or at least the essential part of matter
(since the rest comes from memory and is super-
added to matter), it follows that memory must
be, in principle, a power absolutely independent
of matter. If, then, spirit is a reality, it is here,
in the phenomenon of memory, that we may
come into touch with it experimentally. And
hence any attempt to derive pure memory from
an operation of the brain should reveal on analysis
a radical illusion.
Let us put the same statement in clearer lan
guage. We maintain that matter has no occult
or unknowable power, and that it coin-
seeing that a . \
true theory cides, in essentials, with pure perception,
refutes mate- Thence we conclude that the living body
rialism. .
in general, and the nervous system in
particular, are only channels for the transmission
of movements, which, received in the form of
stimulation, are transmitted in the form of action,
reflex or voluntary. That is to say, it is vain to
attribute to the cerebral substance the property
of engendering representations. Now the pheno
mena of memory, in which we believe that we
can grasp spirit in its most tangible form, are pre
cisely those of which a superficial psychology is
most ready to find the origin in cerebral activity
alone ; just because they are at the point of con
tact between consciousness and matter, and
because even the adversaries of materialism have
no objection to treating the brain as a storehouse
82 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. I
of memories. But if it could be positively estab
lished that the cerebral process answers only to
a very small part of memory, that it is rather the
effect than the cause, that matter is here as else
where the vehicle of an action and not the sub
stratum of a knowledge, then the thesis which
we are maintaining would be demonstrated by
the very example which is commonly supposed to
be most unfavourable to it, and the necessity
might arise of erecting spirit into an independent
reality. In this way also, perhaps, some light would
be thrown on the nature of what is called
spirit, and on the possibility of the interaction of
spirit and matter. For a demonstration of this
kind could not be purely negative. Having shown
what memory is not, we should have to try to
discover what it is. Having attributed to the
body the sole function of preparing actions, we are
bound to enquire why memory appears to be one
with this body, how bodily lesions influence it,
and in what sense it may be said to mould itself
upon the state of the brain matter. It is, more
over, impossible that this enquiry should fail to
give us some information as to the psychological
mechanism of memory, and the various mental
operations connected therewith. And, inversely,
if the problems of pure psychology seem to ac
quire some light from our hypothesis, this
hypothesis itself will thereby gain in certainty and
weight.
But we must present this same idea in yet a
CHAP. I
MEMORY 83
third form, so as to make it quite clear why the
And might problem of memory is in our eyes a
empiric!? privileged problem. From our analysis
metap?ycai ^ P ure perception issue two conclu-
probiems. sions which are in some sort divergent,
one of them going beyond psychology in the
direction of psycho-physiology, and the other in
that of metaphysics, but neither allowing of immed
iate verification. The first concerns the office of
the brain in perception : we maintain that the
brain is an instrument of action, and not of
representation. We cannot demand from facts
the direct confirmation of this thesis, because pure
perception bears, by definition, upon present
objects, acting on our organs and our nerve centres ;
and because everything always happens, in conse
quence, as though our perceptions emanated from
our cerebral state, and were subsequently pro
jected upon an object which differs absolutely
from them. In other words, with regard to
external perception the thesis which we dispute
and that which we substitute for it lead to pre
cisely the same consequences, so that it is possible
to invoke in favour of either the one or the other
its greater intelligibility, but not the authority of
experience. On the contrary, the empirical study
of memory may and must decide between them.
For pure recollection is, by hypothesis, the repre
sentation of an absent object. If the necessary
and sufficient cause of perception lies in a certain
activity of the brain, this same cerebral activity,
84 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i
repeating itself more or less completely in the
absence of the object, will suffice to reproduce
perception : memory will be entirely explicable
by the brain. But if we find that the cerebral
mechanism does indeed in some sort condition
memories, but is in no way sufficient to ensure
their survival ; if it concerns, in remembered
perception, our action rather than our repre
sentation ; we shall be able to infer that it
plays an analogous part in perception itself, and
that its office is merely to ensure our effective
action on the object present. Our first conclusion
may thus find its verification. There would
still remain this second conclusion, which is of a
more metaphysical order, viz. : that in pure per
ception we are actually placed outside ourselves,
we touch the reality of the object in an immediate
intuition. Here also an experimental verifica
tion is impossible, since the practical results are
absolutely the same whether the reality of the
object is intuitively perceived or whether it is
rationally constructed. But here again a study
of memory may decide between the two
hypotheses. For, in the second, there is only a
difference of intensity, or more generally, of
degree, between perception and recollection,
since they are both self-sufficient phenomena
of representation. But if, on the contrary, we
find that the difference between perception and
recollection is not merely in degree, but is a
radical difference in kind, the presumption will
CHAP, i MEMORY 85
be in favour of the hypothesis which finds in per
ception something which is entirely absent from
memory, a reality intuitively grasped. Thus
the problem of memory is in very truth a privi
leged problem, in that it must lead to the psycho
logical verification of two theses which appear to
be insusceptible of proof, and of which the second,
being of a metaphysical order, appears to go far
beyond the borders of psychology.
The road which we have to follow, then, lies
clear before us. We shall first pass in review
evidences of various kinds borrowed from normal
and from pathological psychology, by which
philosophers might hold themselves justified in
maintaining a physical explanation of memory.
This examination must needs be minute or it
would be useless. Keeping as close as possible
to facts, we must seek to discover where, in the
operations of memory, the office of the body begins,
and where it ends. And should we, in the course
of this enquiry, find confirmation of our own hypo
thesis, we shall not hesitate to go further and,
considering in itself the elementary work of the
mind, complete the theory thereby sketched out,
of the relation of spirit with matter.
CHAPTER II
.s - 1
OF THE RECOGNITION OF IMAGEsJ MEMORY AND
THE BRAIN.
WE pass now to the consideration of the conse
quences for the theory of memory, which might
The two ensue from the acceptance of the prin-
memory : the ciples we have laid down. We have
as a bodily said that the body, placed between the
habit, or as 1-1 , j , *
an indepen- objects which act upon it and those
lection. which it influences, is only a conductor,
the office of which is to receive movements, and
to transmit them (when it does not arrest them)
to certain motor mechanisms, determined if the
action is reflex, chosen if the action is volun
tary. Everything, then, must happen as it an
independent memory gathered images as they
successively occur along the course of time ;
and as if our body, together with its surround
ings, was never more than one among these
images, the last, that which we obtain at any mo
ment by making an instantaneous section in the
general stream of becoming. In this section our
body occupies the centre. The things which
surround it act upon it, and it reacts upon them.
Its reactions are more or less complex, more or
CHAP, ii THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 87
less varied, according to the number and nature
ot the apparatus which experience has set up
within it. Therefore in the form of motor contri
vances, and of motor contrivances only, it can
store up the action of the past. Whence it
results that past images, properly so called, must
be otherwise preserved ; and we may formulate
this first hypothesis :
I. The past survives under two distinct forms :
first, in motor mechanisms ; secondly, in indepen-
pendent recollections.
But then the practical, and consequently the
usual function of memory, the utilizing of past
experience for present action, recognition, in
short, must take place in two different ways.
Sometimes it lies in the action itself, and in the
automatic setting in motion of a mechanism
adapted to the circumstances ; at other times it
implies an effort of the mind which seeks in the
past, in order to apply them to the present, those
representations which are best able to enter into
the present situation. Whence our second pro
position :
II. The recognition of a present object is effected
by movements when it proceeds from the object, by
representations when it issues from the subject.
It is true that there remains yet another ques
tion : how these representations are preserved,
and what are their relations with the motor me
chanisms. We shall go into this subject thor
oughly in our next chapter, after we have con-
88 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
sidered the unconscious, and shown where the
fundamental distinction lies between the past
and the present. But already we may speak of
the body as an ever advancing boundary between
the future and the past, as a pointed end,
which our past is continually driving forward
into our future. Whereas my body, taken at a
single moment, is but a conductor interposed
between the objects which influence it and those
on which it acts, it is, on the other hand, when
replaced in the flux of time, always situated at
the very point where my past expires in a deed.
And, consequently, those particular images which
I call cerebral mechanisms terminate at each
successive moment the series of my past representa
tions, being the extreme prolongation of those
representations into the present, their link with
the real, that is, with action. Sever that link, and
you do not necessarily destroy the past image,
but you deprive it of all means of acting upon
the real and consequently, as we shall show, of
being realized. It is in this sense, and in this
sense only, that an injury to the brain can abolish
any part of memory. Hence our third, and last,
proposition :
III. We pass, by imperceptible stages, from
recollections strung out along the course of time to
the movements which indicate their nascent or pos
sible action in space. Lesions of the brain may affect
these movements, but not these recollections.
CHAP, n THE TWO FORMS OP MEMORY 89
We have now to see whether experience verifies
these three propositions.
I. The two forms of memory. I study a lesson,
and in order to learn it by heart I read it a first
time, accentuating every line ; I then repeat it a
certain number of times. At each repetition
there is progress ; the words are more and more
linked together, and at last make a continuous
whole. When that moment comes, it is said that
I know my lesson by heart, that it is imprinted
on my memory.
I consider now how the lesson has been learnt,
and picture to myself the successive phases of
the process. Each several reading then recurs
to me with its own individuality ; I can see it
again with the circumstances which attended it
then and still form its setting. It is distinguished
from those which preceded or followed it by the
place which it occupied in time ; in short, each
reading stands out before my mind as a definite
event in my history. Again it will be said that
these images are recollections, that they are im
printed on my memory. The same words, then,
are used in both cases. Do they mean the same
thing ?
The memory of the lesson, which is remembered
in the sense of learnt by heart, has all the marks
of a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the
repetition of the same effort. Like a habit, it
demands first a decomposition and then a recom-
90 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
position of the whole action. Lastly, like every
habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up
To learn by . ; . J
heart is to in a mechanism which is set in motion
cerebral as a whole by an initial impulse, in a
a habit of closed system of automatic movements
which succeed each other in the same
order and, together, take the same length of time.
The memory of each several reading, on the
contrary, the second or the third for instance,
has none of the marks of a habit.
To recall the . .
successive Its image was necessarily imprinted
stages of . J
learning by at once on the memory, since the
heart is to . . , . .
appeal to an other readings form, by their very de-
independent . . . . ...
memory. nnition, other recollections. It is like
an event in my life ; its essence is to bear a date,
and consequently to be unable to occur again.
All that later readings can add to it will only
alter its original nature ; and though my effort
to recall this image becomes more and more easy
as I repeat it, the image, regarded in itself, was
necessarily at the outset what it always will
be.
It may be urged that these two recollections,
that of the reading and that of the lesson, differ
only as the less from the more, and that the images
successively developed by each repetition overlie
each other, so that the lesson once learned is but
the composite image in which all readings are
blended. And I quite agree that each of the
successive readings differs from the preceding
mainly in the fact that the lesson is better known.
CHAP, n THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY QI
But it is no less certain that each of them, con
sidered as a new reading and not as a lesson better
known, is entirely sufficient to itself, subsists ex
actly as it occurred, and constitutes with all its
concomitant perceptions an original moment of
my history. We may even go further and aver
that consciousness reveals to us a profound differ
ence, a difference in kind, between the two sorts
of recollection. The memory of a given reading
is a representation, and only a representation ;
it is embraced in an intuition of the mind which
I may lengthen or shorten at will ; I assign to it
any duration I please ; there is nothing to prevent
my grasping the whole of it instantaneously, as in
one picture. On the contrary, the memory of the
lesson I have learnt, even if I repeat this lesson
only mentally, requires a definite time, the time
necessary to develop one by one, were it only in
imagination, all the articulatory movements that
are necessary : it is no longer a representation,
it is an action. And, in fact, the lesson once
learnt bears upon it no mark which betrays its
origin and classes it in the past ; it is part of
my present, exactly like my habit of walking or
of writing ; it is lived and acted, rather than
represented: I might believe it innate, if I
did not choose to recall at the same time, as
so many representations, the successive readings
by means of which I learnt it. Therefore these
representations are independent of it, and, just as
they preceded the lesson as I now possess and
92 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, it
know it, so that lesson once learned can do with
out them.
Following to the end this fundamental dis
tinction, we are confronted by two different
memories theoretically independent. The first
records, in the form of memory-images, all the
events of our daily life as they occur in time ;
it neglects no detail ; it leaves to each fact,
to each gesture, its place and date. Regardless
of utility or of practical application, it stores up
the past by the mere necessity of its own nature.
By this memory is made possible the intelligent,
or rather intellectual, recognition of a perception
already experienced ; in it we take refuge every
time that, in the search for a particular image, we
remount the slope of our past. But everypercep-
Habits ti n is prolonged into a nascent action ;
EpSted by an d while the images are taking their
pl ace an( i order in this memory, the
thesSd d o not movements which continue them modi-
fy the organism, and create in the body
new dispositions towards action. Thus
is gradually formed an experience of an entirely
different order, which accumulates within the body,
a series of mechanisms wound up and ready, with
reactions to external stimuli ever more numerous
and more varied, and answers ready prepared to an
ever growing number of possible solicitations. We
become conscious of these mechanisms as they
come into play ; and this consciousness of a whole
past of efforts stored up in the present is indeed
CHAP, n THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 93
also a memory, but a memory profoundly differ
ent from the first, always bent upon action, seated
in the present and looking only to the future.
It has retained from the past only the intelli
gently coordinated movements which represent
the accumulated efforts of the past ; and it recovers
those past efforts, not in the memory-images which
recall them, but in the definite order and systema
tic character with which the actual movements
take place. In truth, it no longer represents our
past to us, it acts it ; and if it still deserves the
name of memory, it is not because it conserves
bygone images, but because it prolongs their use
ful effect into the present moment.
Of these two memories, of which the one
imagines and the other repeats, the second may
such is the su Pply the place of the first and even
memoiy.ua sometimes be mistaken for it. When a
welcomes his master, barking and
recognize*, wagging his tail, he certainly recognizes
him ; but does this recognition imply the evoca
tion of a past image and the comparison of that
image with the present perception ? Does it not
rather consist in the animal s consciousness of a
certain special attitude adopted by his body, an
attitude which has been gradually built up by his
familiar relations with his master, and which the
mere perception of his master now calls forth in him
mechanically ? We must not go too far ; even
in the animal it is possible that vague images of
the past overflow into the present perception ;
94 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
we can even conceive that its entire past is vir
tually indicated in its consciousness ; but this past
does not interest the animal enough to detach it
from the fascinating present, and its recognition
must be rather lived than thought. To call up the
past in the form of an image, we must be able to
withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment,
we must have the power to value the useless, we
must have the will to dream. Man alone is cap
able of such an effort. But even in him the past
to which he returns is fugitive, ever on the point
of escaping him, as though his backward turning
memory were thwarted by the other, more natural,
memory, of which the forward movement bears
him on to action and to life.
When psychologists talk of recollection as of a
fold in a material, as of an impress graven deeper
by repetition, they forget that the im-
But true > . r ,
representative mense majority oi our memories bear
memory re- , , ., ,. ,. ,
cords every upon events and details oi our hie of
moment 01,.,., . , , ,
duration, which the essence is to have a date,
each unique, , , , i_i r
and not to and consequently to be incapable of
be repeated. , . , ,,,, . , . ,
being repeated. I he memories which
we acquire voluntarily by repetition are rare
and exceptional. On the contrary, the record
ing, by memory, of facts and images unique
in their kind takes place at every moment of
duration. But inasmuch as learnt memories are
more useful, they are more remarked. And as
the acquisition of these memories by a repetition
of the same effort resembles the well-known process
CHAP, ii THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 95
of habit, we prefer to set this kind of memory in
the foreground, to erect it into the model memory,
and to see in spontaneous recollection only the
same phenomenon in a nascent state, the begin
ning of a lesson learnt by heart. But how can
we overlook the radical difference between that
which must be built up by repetition and that
which is essentially incapable of being repeated ?
Spontaneous recollection is perfect from the out
set ; time can add nothing to its image without
disfiguring it ; it retains in memory its place
and date. On the contrary, a learnt recollection
passes out of time in the measure that the lesson
is better known ; it becomes more and more im
personal, more and more foreign to our past life.
Repetition, therefore, in no sense effects the con
version of the first into the last ; its office is merely
to utilize more and more the movements by which
the first was continued, in order to organize
them together and, by setting up a mechanism, to
create a bodily habit. Indeed, this habit could
not be called a remembrance, were it not that I
remember that I have acquired it ; and I remem
ber its acquisition only because I appeal to that
memory which is spontaneous, which dates events
and records them but once. Of the two memories,
then, which we have just distinguished, the first
appears to be memory par excellence. The second,
that generally studied by psychologists, is habit
interpreted by memory rather than memory itself.
It is true that the example of a lesson learnt
96 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP n
by heart is to some extent artificial. Yet our
whole life is passed among a limited
The normal , /
consciousness number of objects, which pass more or
calls up only
those memory- less often before our eyes : each of
images which . . . , .
can usefully them, as it is perceived, provokes on
combine with
the present our part movements, at least nascent,
whereby we adapt ourselves to it. These
movements, as they recur, contrive a mechanism
for themselves, grow into a habit, and deter
mine in us attitudes which automatically follow
our perception of things. This, as we have said,
is the main office of our nervous system. The
afferent nerves bring to the brain a disturbance,
which, after having intelligently chosen its path,
transmits itself to motor mechanisms created by re
petition. Thus is ensured the appropriate reaction,
the correspondence to environment adaptation,
in a word which is the general aim of life. And
a living being which did nothing but live would
need no more than this. But, simultaneously
with this process of perception and adaptation
which ends in the record of the past in the form
of motor habits, consciousness, as we have seen,
retains the image of the situations through which it
has successively travelled, and lays them side by
side in the order in which they took place.. Of
what use are these memory-images ? Preserved in
memory, reproduced in consciousness, do they not
distort the practical character of life, mingling
dream with reality ? They would, no doubt, if
our actual consciousness, a consciousness which re-
CHAP. H THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 97
fleets the exact adaptation of our nervous system
to the present situation, did not set aside all those
among the past images which cannot be co
ordinated with the present perception and are
unable to form with it a useful combination. At
most, certain confused recollections, unrelated
to the present circumstances, may overflow
the usefully associated images, making around
these a less illuminated fringe which fades away
into an immense zone of obscurity. But sup
pose an accident which upsets the equilibrium
maintained by the brain between the external
stimulation and the motor reaction, relax for a
moment the tension of the threads which go from
the periphery to the periphery by way of the
centre, and immediately these darkened images
come forward into the full light : it is probably the
latter condition which is realized in any sleep where
in we dream. Of these two memories that we have
distinguished, the second, which is active or motor,
will, then, constantly inhibit the first, or at least
only accept from it that which can throw light
upon and complete in a useful way the present
situation : thus, as we shall see later, could the
laws of the association of ideas be explained.
But, besides the services which they can render
by associating with the present perception, the
images stored up in the spontaneous memory
have yet another use. No doubt they are
dream-images ; no doubt they usually appear
and disappear independently of our will ; and
98 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
this is why, when we really wish to know a
thing, we are obliged to learn it by heart, that is
to say, to substitute for the spontaneous image a
motor mechanism which can serve in its stead.
But there is a certain effort sui generis which
permits us to retain the image itself, for a limited
time, within the field of our consciousness ; and,
thanks to this faculty, we have no need to await
at the hands of chance the accidental repetition
of the same situations, in order to organize into a
habit concomitant movements ; we make use of the
fugitive image to construct a stable mechanism
which takes its place. Either, then, our distinction
of the two independent memories is unsound, or,
if it corresponds to facts, we shall find an exaltation
of spontaneous memory in most cases where the
sensori-motor equilibrium of the nervous system
is disturbed ; an inhibition, on the contrary, in
the normal state, of all spontaneous recollections
which do not serve to consolidate the present
equilibrium ; and lastly, in the operation by
means of which we acquire the habit-memory, a
latent intervention of the image-memory. Let
us see whether the facts confirm this hypothesis.
For the moment we will insist on neither point ;
we hope to throw ample light upon both when
we study the disturbances of memory and the laws
of the association of ideas. We shall be content
for the present to show, in regard to things which
are learnt, how the two memories run side by side
and lend to each other a mutual support. It is
CHAP ii. THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 99
a matter of every-day experience that lessons
committed to the motor memory can be auto
matically repeated ; but observation of patho
logical cases proves that automatism extends
Therefore much further in this direction than we
think. In cases of dementia, we some-
times find that intelligent answers are
StenSper- given to a succession of questions which
masked by are not understood : language here works
habit memory. after ^ manner o f a reflex. 1 Aphasics,
incapable of uttering a word spontaneously, can
recollect without a mistake the words of an air
which they sing. 1 Or again, they will fluently
repeat a prayer, a series of numbers, the days of
the week, or the months of the year. 8 Thus
extremely complex mechanisms, subtle enough to
imitate intelligence, can work by themselves when
once they have been built up, and in consequence
usually obey a mere initial impulse of the will.
But what takes place while they are being built
up ? When we strive to learn a lesson, for in
stance, is not the visual or auditory image which
we endeavour to reconstitute by movements
already in our mind, invisible though present ?
Even in the very first recitation, we recognize,
1 Robertson, Reflex Speech (Journal of Mental Science,
April, 1888). Cf. the article by Ch. Fe re , Le langage reflexe
(Revue Philosophique, Jan. 1896).
1 Oppenheim, Ueber das Verhalten der musikalischen Aus-
drucksbewegungen bei Aphatischen (Charite Annalen, xiii,
1888, p. 348 et seq.).
8 Ibid., p. 365.
TOO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. H
by a vague feeling of uneasiness, any error we
have made, as though from the obscure depths
of consciousness we received a sort of warn
ing. 1 Concentrate your mind on that sensation,
and you will feel that the complete image is there,
but evanescent, a phantasm that disappears just
at the moment when motor activity tries to fix
its outline. During some recent experiments
(which, however, were undertaken with quite a
different purpose), 2 the subjects averred that they
felt just such an impression. A series of letters,
which they were asked to remember, was held
before their eyes for a few seconds. But, to pre
vent any accentuating of the letters so perceived
by appropriate movements of articulation, they
were asked to repeat continuously a given syl
lable while their eyes were fixed on the image.
From this resulted a special psychical state ;
the subjects felt themselves to be in complete
possession of the visual image, although unable to
produce any part of it on demand : to their great
surprise the line disappeared. According to one
observer, the basis was a Gesammtvorstellung, a
sort of all-embracing complex idea in which the
parts have an indefinitely felt unity. 3
1 See, on the subject of this sense of error, the article by
Miiller and Schumann, Experimentelle Beitrdge zur Untersu-
chung des Geddcthtnisses (Zeitschr. /. Psych, u. Phys. der
Sinnesorgane (Dec., 1893, p. 305).
2 W. G. Smith, The Relation of A ttentionto Memory. (Mind,
Jan. 1895.)
8 Ibid. loc. cit., p. 23.
CHAP, tt THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 101
This spontaneous recollection, which is masked
by the acquired recollection, may flash out at
intervals ; but it disappears at the least move
ment of the voluntary memory. If the subject
sees the series of letters, of which he thought he
retained the image, vanish from before his eyes,
this happens mainly when he begins to repeat it :
the effort seems to drive the rest of the image out
of his consciousness. 1 Now, analyse many of the
imaginative methods of mnenomics and you will
find that the object of this science is to bring into
the foreground the spontaneous memory which
was hidden, and to place it, as an active memory,
at our service ; to this end every attempt at
motor memory is, to begin with, suppressed.
The faculty of mental photography, says one
author, 2 belongs rather to subconsciousness than
1 Something of this nature appears to take place in that
affection which German authors call Dyslexic. The patient
reads the first words of a sentence aright, and then stops
abruptly, unable to go on, as though the movements of
articulation had inhibited memory. See, on the subject
of dyslexic : Berlin, Eine besondere Art der Wortblindheit
(Dyslexie), Wiesbaden, 1887, and Sommer, Die Dyslexic
als functionelle Storung (Arch. f. Psychiatrie, 1893). We may
also compare with these phenomena the remarkable cases
of word deafness in which the patient understands the
speech of others, but no longer understands his own. (See
examples cited by Bateman, On Aphasia, p. 200 ; by Bernard,
De I aphasie, Paris 1889, pp. 143 and 144 ; and by Broadbent,
Case of Peculiar Affection of Speech, Brain, 1878-9, p. 484 et
seq.).
2 Mortimer Granville, Ways of remembering. (Lancet, Sept.
27. 1899, p. 458.;
102 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
to consciousness ; it answers with difficulty to
the summons of the will. In order to exercise it,
we should accustom ourselves to retaining, for
instance, several arrangements of points at once,
without even thinking of counting them x : we
must imitate in some sort the instantaneity of
this memory in order to attain to its mastery.
Even so it remains capricious in its manifesta
tions ; and as the recollections which it brings us
are akin to dreams, its more regular intrusion
into the life of the mind may seriously disturb
intellectual equilibrium.
What this memory is, whence it is derived and
how it works, will be shown in the next chapter.
For the moment, the schematic conception will
be enough. So we shall merely sum up the pre
ceding paragraphs and say that the past appears
indeed to be stored up, as we had surmised, under
two extreme forms : on the one hand, motor
mechanisms which make use of it ; on the other,
personal memory-images which picture all past
events with their outline, their colour and their
place in time. Of these two memories the first
follows the direction of nature ; the second, left
to itself, would rather go the contrary way.
The first, conquered by effort, remains depen- |
dent upon our will ; the second, entirely spon
taneous, is as capricious in reproducing as it
is faithful in preserving. The only regular and
1 Kay, Memory and how to improve it. New York, 1888.
CHAP, n THE TWO FORMS OF MEMORY 103
certain service which the second memory can
render to the first is to bring before it images of
what preceded or followed situations similar to
the present situation, so as to guide its choice :
in this consists the association of ideas. There
is no other case in which the memory which recalls
is sure to obey the memory which repeats. Every
where else, we prefer to construct a mechanism
which allows us to sketch the image again, at
need, because we are well aware that we cannot
count upon its reappearance. These are the two
extreme forms of memory in their pure state.
Now we may say at once that it is because
philosophers have concerned themselves only with
the intermediate and, so to speak, impure forms
Thus memory- ^ na * they have misunderstood the true
l motlr Kbit nature of memory. Instead of dis-
" e k d i!?d? ct sociating the two elements, memory-
m^ooaieMe i ma ge and movement, in order to dis-
Sn^why^**" cover subsequently by what series of
SreISiiSo r operations they come, having each aban-
is necessary. d O ned some part of its original purity
to fuse one with the other, they are apt to consider
only the mixed phenomenon which results from
their coalescence. This phenomenon, being mixed,
presents on the one side the aspect of a motor
habit, and on the other that of an image more or less
consciously localized. But they will have it that the
phenomenon is a simple one. So they must assume
that the cerebral mechanism, whether of the brain
or of the medulla oblongata or of the cord, which
104 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. H
serves as the basis of the motor habit, is at the
same time the substratum of the conscious image.
Hence the strange hypothesis of recollections stored
in the brain, which are supposed to become con
scious as though by a miracle, and bring us back
to the past by a process that is left unexplained.
True, some observers do not make so light of
the conscious aspect of the operation, and see
in it something more than an epiphenomenon.
But, as they have not begun by isolating the
memory which retains and sets out the successive
repetitions side by side in the form of memory
images, since they confound it with the habit which
is perfected by use, they are led to believe that the
effect of repetition is brought to bear upon one and
the same single and indivisible phenomenon which
merely grows stronger by recurrence : and, as this
phenomenon clearly ends by being merely a motor
habit corresponding to a mechanism, cerebral or
other, they are led, whether they will or no, to sup
pose that some mechanism of this kind was from the
beginning behind the image and that the brain is an
organ of representation. We are now about to con
sider these intermediate states, and distinguish in
each of them the part which belongs to nascent
action, that is to say of the brain, and the part of
independent memory, that is to say of memory-
images. What are these states ? Being partly motor
they must, on our hypothesis, prolong a present
perception ; but, on the other hand, inasmuch as
they are images, they reproduce past perceptions.
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORY IO5
Now the concrete process by which we grasp the
past in the present is recognition. Recognition,
therefore, is what we have to study, to begin
with.
II. Of recognition in general : memory-images
and movements. There are two ways in which
it is customary to explain the feeling of
What then , . j.u- V * i r\
is recogni- having seen a thing before. On one
tionP ? r
theory, the recognition of a present
perception consists in inserting it mentally in its
former surroundings. I encounter a man for the
first time : I simply perceive him. If I meet him
again, I recognize him, in the sense that the
concomitant circumstances of the original per
ception, returning to my mind, surround the
actual image with a setting which is not a
setting actually perceived. To recognize, then,
according to this theory, is to associate with a
present perception the images which were for
merly given in connexion with it. 1 But, as it
has been justly observed, a renewed perception
cannot suggest the concomitant circumstances
of the original perception unless the latter is
evoked, to begin with, by the present state which
resembles it. 2 Let A be the first perception ;
1 See the systematic treatment of this thesis, supported
by experiments, in Lehmann s articles, Ueber Wieder-
erkennen (Philos. Studien Wundt, vol. v, p. 96 et seq., and
vol. vii, p. 169 et seq.).
2 Pillon, La formation des idees abstraites et generates (Crit.
IO6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
the accompanying circumstances B, C, D, remain
associated with it by contiguity. If I call the
same perception renewed A , as it is not with
A , but with A that the terms B, C, D are bound
up, it is necessary, in order to evoke the terms
B, C, D, that A should be first called up by some
association of resemblance. And it is of no use to
assert that A is identical with A. For the two terms,
though similar, are numerically distinct, and differ
at least by this simple fact that A is a perception,
whereas A is but a memory. Of the two interpre
tations of which we have spoken, the first, then,
melts into the second, which we will now examine.
It is alleged that the present perception dives
it is not a ^ n ^ * ne depths of memory in search of the
oTperceptfon remembrance of the previous perception
and memory. w hi c h resembles it : the sense of recog
nition would thus come from a bringing together,
or a blending, of perception and memory. No
doubt, as an acute thinker l has already pointed
out, resemblance is a relation established by
the mind between terms which it compares
and consequently already possesses ; so the
perception of a resemblance is rather an effect
of association than its cause. But, along with
this definite and perceived resemblance which
Philos. 1885, vol i, p. 208 et seq.). Cf. Ward, Assimilation
and Association (Mind, July 1893 and Oct. 1894).
1 Brochard, La loi de similarite (Revue Philosophique , 1880,
vol. ix, p. 258). M. Rabier shows himself also of this opinion
in his Lemons de Philosophic, vol. i, Psychologie, pp. 187-192.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IO7
consists in the common element seized and disen
gaged by the mind, there is a vague and in some
sort objective resemblance, spread over the sur
face of the images themselves, which might act
perhaps like a physical cause of reciprocal attrac
tion. 1 And should we ask how it is, then, that
we often recognize an object without being able
to identify it with a former image, refuge is
sought in the convenient hypothesis of cerebral
tracks which coincide with each other, of cerebral
movements made easier by practice, 2 or of percep
tive cells communicating with cells where memories
are stored. 8 In truth, all such theories of recog
nition are bound to melt away, in the end, into
physiological hypotheses of this kind. What they
were aiming at, first, was to make all recog
nition issue from a bringing together of per
ception and memory ; but experience stands
over against them, testifying that in most cases
recollection emerges only after the perception
is recognized. So they are sooner or later
forced to relegate to the brain, in the form of a
combination between movements or of a connexion
between cells, that which they had first declared
to be an association of ideas ; and to explain the
1 Pillon, loc. tit., p. 207. Cf. James Sully, The human
Mind, London, 1892, vol. i, p. 331.
2 H off ding, Ueber Wiedererkennen, Association und psy-
chische Activitdt (Vierteljahresschrift /. wissenschaftlichc Philo
sophic, 1889, p. 433.
8 Munk, Ueber die Functiontn der Grosshirnrwde. Berlin,
1881, p. 108 et seq.
IO8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
fact of recognition, very clear on our view by
the hypothesis, which seems to us very obscure, of
a brain which stores up ideas.
But the fact is that the association of a perception
with a memory is not enough to account for the
process of recognition. For if recognition took place
in this way, it would always be obliterated when
the memory images had disappeared, and always
happen when these images are retained. Psychic
blindness, or the inability to recognize perceived
objects, would, then, never occur without an inhibi
tion of visual memory ; and, above all, the inhibi
tion of visual memory would invariably produce
psychic blindness. But neither consequence is
borne out by facts. In a case studied by Wil-
brand, 1 the patient could describe with her eyes
shut the town she lived in and, in imagination,
walk through its streets : yet, once in the street,
she felt like a complete stranger ; she recognized
nothing and could not find her way. Facts of the
same kind have been observed by Fr. Miiller 2 and
Lissauer: 3 the patients can summon up the
mental picture of an object named to them ; they
describe it very well ; but they cannot recognize
it when it is shown to them. The retention, even
the conscious retention, of a visual memory is,
1 Die Seelenblindheit als Herderscheinung, Wiesbaden,
1887, p. 56.
2 Ein Beitrag zur Kennlniss der Seelenblindheit (Arch. /.
Psychiatrie, vol. xxiv, 1892.
8 Em Fall von Seelenblindheit (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, 1889).
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IOQ
therefore, not enough for the recognition of a simi
lar perception. Inversely, in Charcot s case, which
has become the classic example of a complete
eclipse of visual images, 1 not all recognition of
perceptions was obliterated. A careful study of the
report of the case is conclusive on this point. No
doubt the patient failed to recognize the streets and
houses of his native town, to the extent of being
unable to name them or to find his way about
them ; yet he knew that they were streets and
houses. He no longer recognized his wife and chil
dren ; yet, when he saw them, he could say that
this was a woman, that those were children. None
of this would have been possible, had there been
psychic blindness in the absolute sense of the
word. A certain kind of recognition, then, which
we shall need to analyse, was obliterated, not the
general faculty of recognition. So we must conclude
that not every recognition implies the intervention
of a memory image ; and, conversely, that we
may still be able to call up such images when we
have lost the power of identifying perceptions
with them. What then is recognition, and how
shall we define it ?
There is, in the first place, if we carry the
process to the extreme, an instantaneous recogni
tion, of which the body is capable by itself,
without the help of any explicit memory-image. It
1 Reported by Bernard, Un cas de suppression brusque et
isolee de la vision mentale (Progres Medical, July 21, 1883).
IIO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
consists in action and not in representation,
in one kind of For instance, I take a walk in a town
fheS Sf seen then for the first time - At ever Y
fami S iiar S uy L street corner I hesitate, uncertain where
n h es S C oT cion8 " ! am g m g- I am in doubt ; and I
m e oto? r ao- ed mean by this that alternatives are offered
companiment. to my body, that my movement as a
whole is discontinuous, that there is nothing in one
attitude which foretells and prepares future atti
tudes. Later, after prolonged sojourn in the town,
I shall go about it mechanically, without having any
distinct perception of the objects which I am
passing. Now, between these two extremes, the one
in which perception has not yet organized the
definite movements which accompany it, and the
other in which these accompanying movements are
organized to a degree which renders perception
useless, there is an intermediate state in which
the object is perceived, yet provokes movements
which are connected, continuous and called up
by one another. I began by a state in which I
distinguished only my perception ; I shall end
in a state in which I am hardly conscious of
anything but automatism : in the interval there
is a mixed state, a perception followed step by
step by automatism just impending. Now, if
the later perceptions differ from the first percep
tion in the fact that they guide the body towards
the appropriate mechanical reaction, if, on the
other hand, those renewed perceptions appear to
the mind under that special aspect which charac-
CHAP n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES TIT
terizes familiar or recognized perceptions, must
we not assume that the consciousness of a well-
regulated motor accompaniment, of an organized
motor reaction, is here the foundation of the sense
of familiarity ? At the basis of recognition there
would thus be a phenomenon of a motor order.
To recognize a common object is mainly to
know how to use it. This is so true that early
observers gave the name apraxia to that failure
of recognition which we call psychic blindness. 1
But to know how to use a thing is to sketch
out the movements which adapt themselves to
it ; it is to take a certain attitude, or at least
to have a tendency to do so through what
the Germans call motor impulses (Bewegungs-
antriebe). The habit of using the object has,
then, resulted in organizing together movements
and perceptions ; and the consciousness of these
nascent movements, which follow perception after
the manner of a reflex, must be here also at the
bottom of recognition.
There is no perception which is not prolonged
into movement. Ribot 2 and Maudsley 8 long
since drew attention to this point. The training of
1 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, p. 181. Allen
Starr, Apraxia and Aphasia (Medical Record, Oct. 27, 1888).
Cf. Laquer, Zur Localisation der Sensorischen Aphasie
(Neurolog. Centralblati, June 15, 1888), and Dodds, On some
central affections of vision (Brain, 1885).
2 Les mouvemcnts, et leur importance psychologique (Revue
Philosophique,i8jg, vol. viii, p. 271 et seq.). Cf. Psychologic
de Vattention, Paris, 1889, p. 75.
a Physiology of Mind, p. 206 et seq.
112 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
the senses consists in just the sum of the connexions
established between the sensory impression and the
movement which makes use of it. As the impression
is repeated, the connexion is consolidated. Nor is
there anything mysterious in the mechanism of
the operation. Our nervous system is evidently
arranged with a view to the building up of motor
apparatus linked, through the intermediary of cen
tres, with sense stimuli ; and the discontinuity of
the nervous elements, the multiplicity of their
terminal branches, which are probably capable of
joining in various ways, make possible an unlimited
number of connexions between impressions and
the corresponding movements. But the mechan
ism in course of construction cannot appear to
consciousness in the same form as the mechan
ism already constructed. There is something
which profoundly distinguishes and clearly mani
fests those systems of movements which are consoli
dated in the organism ; and that is, we believe,
the difficulty we have in modifying their order.
It is, again, the preformation of the movements
which follow in the movements which precede,
a preformation whereby the part virtually con
tains the whole, as when each note of a tune learnt
by heart seems to lean over the next to watch
its execution. 1 If, then, even* perception has
1 In one of the mo<t ingenious chapters of his Psychologic
(Paris, 1893, vol. i, p. -42 . Fouillee says that the sense of
familiarity is largely due to the diminution of the inward
sJtock which constitutes surprise.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 113
its organized motor accompaniment, the ordinary
feeling of recognition has its root in the conscious
ness of this organization.
In fact, we commonly act our recognition before
we think it. Our daily life is spent among objects
whose very presence invites us to play a part : in
this the familiarity of their aspect consists. Motor
tendencies would, then, be enough by themselves to
give us the feeling of recognition. But we hasten to
add that in most cases there is something else besides.
For, while motor apparatus are built up under
the influence of perceptions that are analysed
And these with increasing precision by the body,
SS e tS our P ast psychical life is there : it
Semory a - moilg survives as we shall try to prove-
mem-toZ with all the detail of its events local-
ges intervene. j ze( j i n time. Always inhibited by
the practical and useful consciousness of the
present moment, that is to say, by the sensori-
motor equilibrium of a nervous system con
necting perception with action, this memory
merely awaits the occurrence of a rift between
the actual impression and its corresponding
movement to slip in its images. As a rule,
when we desire to go back along the course of the
past and discover the known, localized, personal
memory-image which is related to the present,
an effort is necessary, whereby we draw back from
the act to which perception inclines us : the
latter would urge us towards the future ; we have
to go backwards into the past. In this sense,
114 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, u
movement rather tends to drive away the image.
Yet, in one way, it contributes to its approach.
For, though the whole series of our past images
remains present within us, still the representation
which is analogous to the present perception
has to be chosen from among all possible repre
sentations. Movements, accomplished or merely
nascent, prepare this choice, or at the very least
mark out the field in which we shall seek the
image we need. By the very constitution of our
nervous system, we are beings in whom present
impressions find their way to appropriate move
ments : if it so happens that former images can
just as well be prolonged in these movements, they
take advantage of the opportunity to slip into the
actual perception and get themselves adopted by
it. They then appear, in fact, to our conscious
ness, though it seems as if they ought, by right,
to remain concealed by the present state. So
we may say that the movements which bring about
mechanical recognition hinder in one way, and
encourage in another, recognition by images. In
principle, the present supplants the past. But, on
the other hand, ]ust because the disappearance of
former images is due to their inhibition by our
present attitude, those whose shape might fit
into this attitude encounter less resistance than
the others ; and if, then, any one of them is
indeed able to overcome the obstacle, it is the
image most similar to the present perception that
will actually do so.
CHAP. H MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 115
If our analysis is correct, the diseases which
affect recognition will be of two widely differing
Therefore forms, and facts will show us two kinds
one kind of
psychic of psychic blindness. For we may pre-
blindness may , , . . , . , ,
be due to a sume that, m some cases, it is the mem-
distnrbance . 1-1
of motor ory -image which can no longer reappear,
habits, not to J . ?
the loss of and that, in other cases, it is merely
images. the bond between perception and
the accompanying habitual movements which is
broken, perception provoking diffused move
ments, as though it were wholly new. Do the facts
confirm this hypothesis ?
There can be no dispute as to the first point.
The apparent abolition of visual memory in psychic
blindness is so common a fact that it served, fora
time, as a definition of that disorder. We shall
have to consider how far, and in what sense, mem
ories can really disappear. What interests us for
the moment is that cases occur in which there is no
recognition and yet visual memory is not altogether
lost. Have we here then, as we maintain, merely
a disturbance of motor habits, or at most an inter
ruption of the chain which unite them to sense
perceptions ? As no observer has considered a
question of this nature, we should be hard put to
it for an answer if we had not noticed here and
there in their descriptions certain facts which
appear to us significant.
The first of these facts is the loss of the sense of
direction. All those who have treated the subject
of psychic blindness have been struck bythispecu-
Il6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
liarity. Lissauer s patient had completely lost the
faculty of finding his way about his own house. 1
Fr. Miiller insists on the fact that, while blind men
soon learn to find their way, the victim of psychic
blindness fails, even after months of practice, to
find his way about his own room. 2 But is not this
faculty of orientation the same thing as the faculty
of coordinating the movements of the body with
the visual impression, and of mechanically prolong
ing perceptions in useful reactions ?
There is a second, and even more characteristic
fact, and that is the manner in which these patients
draw. We can conceive two fashions of drawing.
In th^ first we manage, by tentative efforts, to
set down here and there on the paper a certain
number of points, and we then connect them
together, verifying continually the resemblance
between the drawing and the object. This is
what is known as point to point drawing. But
our habitual method is quite different. We draw
with a continuous line, after having looked at, or
thought of, our model. How shall we explain such
a faculty, except by our habit of discovering at once
the organization of the outlines of common objects,
that is to say, by a motor tendency to draft
their diagram in one continuous line ? But if it is
1 Op. cit., Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1889-90, p. 224. Cf. Wil-
brand, op. cit., p. 140, and Bernhardt, Eigenthiimlichcr Fall
von Hirnerkrankung (Berliner klinischc Wochenschrift, 1877,
P- 58i>
* Op. cit.. Arch. f. Psychiatric, vol. xxiv, p.
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 117
just such habits or correspondences which are lost
in certain forms of psychic blindness, the patient
may still perhaps be able to draw bits of a line
which he will connect together more or less well ;
but he will no longer be able to draw at a stroke,
because the tendency to adopt and reproduce the
general movement of the outline is no longer pre
sent in his hand. Now this is just what experi
ment verifies. Lissauer s observations are instruc
tive on this head. 1 His patient had the greatest
difficulty in drawing simple objects; and if he
tried to draw them from memory, he traced de
tached portions of them chosen at random, and
was unable to unite these into a whole. Cases
of complete psychic blindness are, however, rare.
Those of word-blindness are much more numerous
cases of a loss, that is, of visual recognition limited
to the characters of the alphabet. Now it is a fact of
common observation that the patient, in such cases,
is unable to seize what may be called the movement
of the letters when he tries to copy them. He
begins to draw them at any point, passing back
and forth between the copy and the original to
make sure that they agree. And this is the more
remarkable in that he often retains unimpaired
the faculty of writing from dictation or spon
taneously. What is lost is clearly the habit of
distinguishing the articulations of the object per
ceived, that is to say, of completing the visual
1 Op. cit., Arch, f. Psychiatric, 1889-90, p. 233.
Il8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
perception by a motor tendency to sketch its
diagram. Whence we may conclude that such
is indeed the primordial condition of recogni
tion.
But we must pass now from automatic recog
nition, which is mainly achieved through move
ments, to that which requires the regular interven
tion of memory- images. The first is recognition by
^attention ; the second, as we shall see, is attentive
recognition.
This form also begins by movements. But,
whereas, in automatic recognition, our movements
prolong our perception in order to draw from
it useful effects and thus take us away from the
object perceived, here, on the contrary, they bring
us back to the object, to dwell upon its outlines.
Thus is explained the preponderant, and no longer
merely accessory, part taken here by memory-
images. For if we suppose that the movements
forego their practical end, and that motor activity,
instead of continuing perception by useful reactions,
turns back to mark out its more striking features,
then the images which are analogous to the pre
sent perception, images of which these movements
have already sketched out, so to speak, the form,
will come regularly, and no longer accidentally, to
flow into this mould, though they may have to give
up much of their detail in order to get in more
easily.
///. Gradual passage of recollections into move-
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS
ments. Recognition and attention. Here we come
Transition to to the essential point of our discussion.
recognition. ^ n those cases where recognition is
biem oTattSi- attentive, i.e. where memory-images
co nsi s d h eted d be are regularly united with the present
perception, is it the perception which
t e o Ct the determines mechanically the appearance
brain. o f ^ e memories, or is it the memories
which spontaneously go to meet the perception ?
On the answer to this question will depend the
nature of the relation which philosophers will have
to establish between the brain and memory. For
in every perception there is a disturbance communi
cated by the nerves to the perceptive centres. If
the passing on of this movement to other cortical
centres had, as its real effect, the upspringing of
images in these, then we might in strictness main
tain that memory is but a function of the brain.
But if we can establish that here, as elsewhere,
movement produces nothing but movement, that
the office of the sense-stimulation is merely to
impress on the body a certain attitude into which
recollections will come to insert themselves, then,
as it would be clear that the whole effect of
the material vibrations is exhausted in this work
of motor adaptation, we should have to look for
memory elsewhere. On the first hypothesis, the
disorders of memory occasioned by a cerebral
lesion would result from the fact that the recol
lections occupied the damaged region and were
destroyed with it. On the second, these lesions
120 MATTER AND MEMORY CHA*. it
would affect our nascent or possible action, but
our action alone. Sometimes they would hinder
the body from taking, in regard to the object, the
attitude that may call back its memory-image ;
sometimes they would sever the bonds between
remembrance and the present reality ; that is,
by suppressing the last phase of the realization
of a memory the phase of action they would
thereby hinder the memory from becoming actual.
But in neither case would a lesion of the brain
really destroy memories.
The second hypothesis is ours ; but, before we
attempt to verify it, we must briefly state how
we understand the general relations of percep
tion, attention and memory. In order to show
how a memory may, by gradual stages, come to
graft itself on an attitude or a movement, we
shall have to anticipate in some degree the con
clusions of our next chapter.
What is attention ? In one point of view the
essential effect of attention is to render perception
more intense, and to spread out its
flrilran 11 ** details ; regarded in its content, it would
*he P body. n ! resolve itself into a certain magnifying
Se ively>it of the intellectual state. 1 But, on the
movement * ^her hand, consciousness testifies to an
irreducible difference of form between
1 Marillier, Remarqucs sur le mecanisme de I altention
(Revue Philosophique, 1889, vol. xxvii). Cf. Ward, art.
PSYCHOLOGY in the Encyclopaedia Briiannica ; and Bradley,
Is there a Special Activity of Attention? (Mind, 1886, vol. xi,
P. 3050
CHA*. ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 121
this increase of intensity and that which is owing
to a higher power of the external stimulus : it
seems indeed to come from within, and to indicate
a certain attitude adopted by the intellect. But
just here begins the difficulty, for the idea of
an intellectual attitude is not a clear idea. Psy
chologists will here speak of a concentration of
the mind/ 1 or again of an apperceptive a
effort to bring perception into the field of distinct
intelligence. Some of them, materializing this
idea, will suppose a higher tension of cerebral
energy, 3 or even the setting free of a certain amount
of central energy which reinforces the stimulation
received. 4 But either the fact observed psy
chologically is merely translated thereby into a
physiological symbolism which seems to us even less
clear, or else we always come back to a metaphor.
Stage by stage we shall be led on to define atten
tion as an adaptation of the body rather than of the
mind, and to see in this attitude of consciousness
mainly the consciousness of an attitude. Such
is the position assumed by Ribot 6 in the
discussion, and, though it has been attacked,*
1 Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. i, p. 247.
2 Wundt, Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologic,
vol. iii, p. 331 et seq.
3 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, p. 299. Cf. Bastian,
Les processus nerueux dans I attention (Revue Philosophique,
vol. xxxiii, p. 360 et seq.).
4 W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 441.
6 Psychologie de I attention, Paris, 1889.
Marillier, op. cit. Cf. J. Sully, The Psycho- physical
Process in Attention (Brain, 1890, p. 154).
122 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
it appears to have retained all its strength, pro
vided, however, that we are content to see, in
the movements described by Ribot, only
the negative condition of the phenomenon. For,
even if we suppose that the accompanying move
ments of voluntary attention are mainly move
ments of arrest, we still have to explain the accom
panying work of the mind, that is to say, the
But the mysterious operation by which the same
positive ride ..... ,
of attention organ, perceiving in the same surround-
is the effort ., , . ,. . ,
which seeks ings the same object, discovers in it
past memory- . , . .
images to a growing number of things. But we
insert them , ,.
into the may go farther, and maintain that the
perception, phenomena of inhibition are merely a
preparation for the actual movements of volun
tary attention. Suppose for a moment that atten
tion, as we have already suggested, implies a
backward movement of the mind which thus gives
up the pursuit of the useful effect of a present per
ception : there will indeed be, first, an inhibition
of movement, an arresting action. But, upon this
general attitude, more subtle movements will
soon graft themselves, some of which have been
already remarked and described, 1 and all of which
combine to retrace the outlines of the object
perceived. With these movements the positive,
no longer merely negative, work of attention
begins. It is continued by memories.
For, while external perception provokes on our
1 N. Lange, Beitr. zur Theorie der Sinnlichen Aufmerk-
samkeit (Philos. Studien, Wundt, vol. vii, pp. 390-422).
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 123
part movements which retrace its main lines, our
memory directs upon the perception received the
memory-images which resemble it and which are
already sketched out by the movements themselves.
Memory thus creates anew the present perception ;
or rather it doubles this perception by reflecting
upon it either its own image or some other memory-
image of the same kind. If the retained or
remembered image will not cover all the details of
the image that is being perceived, an appeal is made
to the deeper and more distant regions of memory,
until other details that are already known come to
project themselves upon those details that remain
unperceived. And the operation may go on in
definitely; memory strengthening and enriching
perception, which, in its turn becoming wider,
draws into itself a growing number of comple
mentary recollections. So let us no longer think
of a mind which disposes of some fixed quantity
of light, now diffusing it around, now concen
trating it on a single point. Metaphor for meta
phor, we would rather compare the elementary
work of attention to that of the telegraph clerk
who, on receipt of an important despatch, sends
it back again, word for word, in order to check
its accuracy.
But, to send a telegram, we must know how to
use the machine. And, in the same way, in order to
reflect upon a perception the image which we have
received from it, we must be able to reproduce
it, i.e. to reconstruct it by an effort of synthesis.
124 MATTER AND MEMORV CHAP, n
It has been said that attention is a power of
analysis, and it is true ; but it has not been suffi
ciently shown how an analysis of this kind is
possible, nor by what process we are able to
discover in a perception that which could not be
perceived in it at first. The truth is that this
analysis is effected by a series of attempts at a
synthesis, i.e. by so many hypotheses : our memory
chooses, one after the other, various analogous
images which it launches in the direction of the
new perception. But the choice is not made
at random. What suggests the hypotheses,
what presides, even from afar, over the choice
is the movement of imitation which continues
the perception, and provides for the perception
and for the images a common framework.
But, if this be so, the mechanism of distinct
perception must be different from what it
Thus an is usually thought to be. Perception
attentive -, i
perception is does not consist merely in impres-
on r the sions gathered, or even elaborated, by
present object, , . , TM_- -i
of chosen the mind. This is the case, at most,
the* past, with the perceptions that are dissipated
as soon as received, those which we disperse
in useful actions. But every attentive percep
tion truly involves a reflexion, in the etymological
sense of the word, that is to say the pro
jection, outside ourselves, of an actively created
image, identical with, or similar to, the object on
which it comes to mould itself. If, after having
gazed at any object, we turn our eyes abruptly
CHAP. ii. RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 125
away, we obtain an after image of it : must
we not suppose that this image existed already
while we were looking? The recent discovery
of centrifugal fibres of perception inclines us to
think that this is the usual course of things and
that, beside the afferent process which carries
the impression to the centre, there is another
process, of contrary direction, which brings back
the image to the periphery. It is true that we
are here dealing with images photographed upon
the object itself, and with memories following
immediately upon the perception of which they
are but the echo. But, behind these images,
which are identical with the object, there are
others, stored in memory, which merely resemble
it, and others, finally, which are only more or
less distantly akin to it. All these go out to
meet the perception, and, feeding on its substance,
acquire sufficient vigour and life to abide with it
in space. The experiments of Miinsterberg 1 and
of Kiilpe * leave no doubt as to this latter point :
any memory-image that is capable of interpreting
our actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly
into it that we are no longer able to discern what
is perception and what is memory. The ingenious
experiments of Goldscheider and Miiller on the
mechanism of reading are most interesting in
this regard. 3 Arguing against Grashey, who, in
1 Bcitrdge zur experimentetten Psychologic, vol. iv, p. 15
et seq. 2 Grundriss der Psychologic. Leipzig, 1893, p. 185.
8 Zur Physiologic und Pathologic dcs Lesens (Zcitschr. /.
126 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ix
a well-known essay, 1 maintained that we read
words letter by letter, these observers proved
by experiments that rapid reading is a real work
of divination. Our mind notes here and there
a few characteristic lines and fills all the inter
vals with memory-images which, projected on
the paper, take the place of the real printed
characters and may be mistaken for them. Thus
we are constantly creating or reconstructing.
Our distinct perception is really comparable to
a closed circle in which the perception-image,
going towards the mind, and the memory-
image, launched into space, career the one behind
the other.
We must emphasize this latter point. Atten
tive perception is often represented as a series
The of processes which make their way in
number and i /- , ,-, i- ...
complexity single file ; the object exciting sensa-
tions, the sensations causing ideas to
on the 1 "" start up before them, each idea setting
teDJicm in motion, one in front of the other,
adopted by , r , ,
the mind. points more and more remote of the
intellectual mass. Thus there is supposed to be
a rectilinear progress, by which the mind goes
further and further from the object, never to
return to it. We maintain, on the contrary.
Klinische Medicin, 1893). Cf. McKeen Cattell, Ueber dig
Zeit der Erkennung von Schriftzeichen (Philos. Studien, 1885-
86).
1 Ueber Aphasie and ihre Beziehungen zur W ahrnehmungen
(Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1885, vol. xvi).
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 127
that reflective perception is a circuit, in which
all the elements, including the perceived object
itself, hold each other in a state of mutual tension
as in an electric circuit, so that no disturbance
starting from the object can stop on its way and
remain in the depths of the mind : it must always
find its way back to the object whence it proceeds.
Now, it must not be thought that this is a mere
matter of words. We have here two radically
different conceptions of the intellectual process.
According to the first, things happen mechanic
ally, and by a merely accidental series of succes
sive additions. At each moment of an attentive
perception, for example, new elements sent up
from a deeper stratum of the mind might join
the earlier elements, without creating thereby
a general disturbance and without bringing about
a transformation of the whole system. In the
second, on the contrary, an act of attention implies
such a solidarity between the mind and its object,
it is a circuit so well closed, that we cannot pass
to states of higher concentration without creating,
whole and entire, so many new circuits which
envelop the first and have nothing in common
between them but the perceived object. Of
these different circles of memory, which later
we shall study in detail, the smallest, A, is the
nearest to immediate perception. It contains
only the object O, with the after-image which
comes back and overlies it. Behind it, the larger
and larger circles B, C, D correspond to growing
128
MATTER AND MEMORY
CHAP. II
efforts at intellectual expansion. It is the whole
of memory, as we shall see, that passes over into
each of these circuits, since
memory is always present ;
but that memory, capable,
by reason of its elasticity, of
expanding more and more,
i reflects upon the object a
growing number of sug
gested images, sometimes
the details of the object
itself, sometimes concomi
tant details which may
throw light upon it. Thus,
after having rebuilt the
object perceived, as an
independent whole, we re
assemble, together with
it, the more and more
distant conditions with which it forms one
system. If we call B , C , D , these causes of
growing depth, situated behind the object, and
virtually given with the object itself, it will
be seen that the progress of attention results in
creating anew not only the object perceived,
but also the ever widening systems with which
it may be bound up ; so that in the measure in
which the circles B, C, D represent a higher
expansion of memory, their reflexion attains
in B , Of, D deeper strata of reality.
The same psychical life, therefore, must be
no. L
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS I2Q
supposed to be repeated an endless number of
times on the different storeys of memory, and the
same act of the mind may be performed at
varying heights. In the effort of attention, the
mind is always concerned in its entirety, but it
simplifies or complicates itself according to the
level on which it chooses to go to work. Usually
it is the present perception which determines
the direction of our mind ; but, according to the
degree of tension which our mind adopts and the
height at which it takes its stand, the perception
develops a greater or smaller number of images.
In other words, personal recollections, exactly
localized, the series of which represents the course
so there ate f our P as t existence, make up, all to-
pies en oi gether, the last and largest enclosure
the m Seat f our memory. Essentially fugitive,
SS, 811 they become materialized only by chance,
plane 8 of* either when an accidentally precise de-
dream, termination of our bodily attitude
attracts them, or when the very indetermination
of that attitude leaves a clear field to the
caprices of their manifestation. But this outer
most envelope contracts and repeats itself in
inner and concentric circles, which in the : r
narrower range enclose the same recollections
grown smaller, more and more removed from
their personal and original form, and more and
more capable, from their lack of distinguishing
features, of being applied to the present percep
tion and of determining it after the manner of a
I3O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
species which defines and absorbs the individual.
There comes a moment when the recollection thus
brought down is capable of blending so well with
the present perception that we cannot say where
perception ends or where memory begins. At
that precise moment, memory, instead of capri
ciously sending in and calling back its images,
follows regularly, in all their details, the move
ments of the body.
But, in the degree that these recollections draw
nearer to movements, and so to external per-
wwie, on ception, the work of memory acquires
action" 16 f a m g ner practical importance. Past
images, reproduced exactly as they were,
bec^Leone w ^ n a ^ their details and even with their
with action, affective colouring, are the images of
idle fancy or of dream : to act is just to induce
this memory to shrink, or rather to become
thinned and sharpened, so that it presents nothing
thicker than the edge of a blade to actual exper
ience, into which it will thus be able to penetrate.
In truth, it is because psychology has failed to
separate out the motor element in memory, that
we have sometimes overlooked and sometimes
exaggerated what is automatic in the evocation
of remembrances. According to our view, an
appeal is made to activity at the precise moment
when perception gives rise to imitative move
ments which scan it, as it were, automatically. A
sketch is thereby furnished to us, into which we
put the right details and the right colouring by
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 131
projecting into it memories more or less remote.
But such is not the usual way of describing the
process. Sometimes the mind is supposed to be
absolutely independent of circumstances, to work
exactly as it likes on present or absent objects ;
and then we can no longer understand how it is
that the normal process of attention may be
seriously impaired by even a slight disturbance
of the sensori-motor equilibrium. Sometimes,
on the contrary, the evocation of images is sup
posed to be a mere mechanical effect of present
perception ; it is assumed that, by a necessary
concatenation of processes supposed to be all
alike, the object calls forth sensations and the
sensations ideas which cling to them ; but then,
since there is no reason why the operation, which
is mechanical to begin with, should change its
character as it goes on, we are led to the hypo
thesis of a brain wherein mental states may dwell
to slumber and to awaken. In both cases the
true function of the body is misunderstood, and
as neither theory teaches how and why the inter
vention of a mechanism is necessary, neither of
them is able to show where such intervention
should stop if it is once brought in.
But it is time to leave these general considera
tions. We must ascertain whether our hypothesis
is confirmed or contradicted by the facts of
cerebral localization known at the present day.
The disorders of imaginative memory, which
correspond to local lesions of the cortex, are
132 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
always diseases of the faculty of recognition ;
either of visual or auditory recognition in general
(psychic blindness and deafness), or of the recog
nition of words (word blindness, word deafness,
etc.). These disorders we have now to exam
ine.
If our hypothesis is well founded, these failures
of recognition are in no sense due to the fact
that the recollections occupied the in-
Hence we may __ r
infer that jured region of the brain. They must
lesions oi the J *
brain affect be due to one of two causes : some-
the automatic
movements of times our body is no longer able
inattentive J
recognition, automatically to adopt, under the influ-
or the volun- r t
tary move- e nce of the external stimulus, the precise
ments of
attentive attitude by means of which a choice
recognition,
but nothing could be automatically made among
our memories ; sometimes the mem
ories are no longer able to find a fulcrum in
the body, a means of prolonging themselves in
action. In the first case, the lesion affects the
mechanisms which continue, in an automati
cally executed movement, the stimulation re
ceived : attention can no longer be fixed by the
object. In the second case, the lesion involves
those particular cortical centres which prepare
voluntary movements by lending them the re
quired sensory antecedent, centres which, rightly
or wrongly, are termed image-centres : attention
can no longer be fixed by the subject. But, in
either case, it is actual movements which are
hindered or future movements which are no
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 133
longer prepared : there has been no destruction
of memories.
Now pathology confirms this forecast. It re-
reveals to us two absolutely distinct kinds of psychic
blindness and deafness, and of word blindness and
deafness. In the first kind, visual and auditory
memories are still evoked, but they cannot apply
themselves to the corresponding perceptions. In
the second, evocation of the memories themselves
is hindered. Is it true that the lesion involves,
as we said, the sensori-motor mechanisms of auto
matic attention in the first case, and the imagina
tive mechanisms of voluntary attention in the
second ? In order to verify our hypothesis, we
must limit demonstration to a definite example.
No doubt we could show that visual recognition
of things in general, and of words in particular,
implies a semi-automatic motor process to begin
with, and then an active projection of memories
which engraft themselves on the corresponding atti
tudes. But we prefer to confine ourselves to impres
sions of hearing, and more particularly to the hear
ing of articulate language, because this example
is the most comprehensive. To hear speech is,
in fact, first of all to recognize a sound, then
to discover its sense, and finally to interpret it
more or less thoroughly : in short, it is to pass
through all the stages of attention and to exercise
several higher or lower powers of memory. More
over, no disorders are more common or better
studied than those of the auditive memory of
134 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
words. And, lastly, acoustic verbal images are
not destroyed without a serious lesion of certain
determined convolutions of the cortex : so that
we are here provided with an undisputed example
of localization, in regard to which we can enquire
whether the brain is really capable of storing up
memories. We have, then, to show in the audi
tory recognition of words : first, an automatic
sensori-motor process ; secondly, an active and,
so to speak, excentric projection of memory-
images.
i. I listen to two people speaking in a language
which is unknown to me. Do I therefore hear
Evidence from them talk ? The vibrations which
wha y t d we We reacn m y ear s are the same as those
String and which strike theirs. Yet I perceive
^mSor The on ly a confused noise, in which all
diagram. sounds are alike. I distinguish no
thing, and could not repeat anything. In this
same sonorous mass, however, the two interlo
cutors distinguish consonants, vowels and sylla
bles which are not at all alike, in short, separate
words. Between them and me where is the
difference ?
The question is, how can the knowledge of a
language, which is only memory, modify the
material content of a present perception, and
cause some listeners actually to hear what
others, in the same physical conditions, do not
hear. It is alleged, indeed, that the auditory
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 135
recollections of words, accumulated in memory,
are called up by the sound-impression and come
to strengthen its effect. But if the conversa
tion to which I listen is, for me, only a noise,
we may suppose the sound increased as much
as we like : the noise will be none the more
intelligible for being louder. I grant that the
memory of a word will be called up by the sound
of that word : yet it is necessary, for this, that
the sound of the word should have been heard
by the ear. How can the sounds perceived speak
to memory, how can they choose, in the store
house of auditory images, those which should
come to rejoin them, unless they have been al
ready separated, distinguished, in short, per
ceived, as syllables and as words ?
This difficulty does not appear to have been
sufficiently noticed by the theorists of sensory
aphasia. For in word deafness the patient finds
himself, in regard to his own language, in the
same position as we all are when we hear an
unknown tongue. He has generally preserved
intact his sense of hearing, but he has no under
standing of the words spoken to him, and is fre
quently even unable to distinguish them. The
explanation generally given of the disease is
that the auditory recollection of words has
been destroyed in the cortex, or that a lesion,
sometimes transcortical, sometimes sub-cortical,
hinders the auditive memory from evoking the
idea, or the perception from uniting with the
136 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
memory. But in the latter case, at least, the
psychological question has still to be answered :
what is the conscious process which the lesion
has abolished, and what is the intermediary pro
cess that we go through in our normal condition
in order to discern words and syllables which are,
at first, given to the ear as a continuity of sound ?
The difficulty would be insuperable if we really
had only auditory impressions on the one hand,
and auditory memories on the other. Not so
however, if auditory impressions organize nascent
movements, capable of scanning the phrase which
is heard and of emphasizing its main articulations.
These automatic movements of internal accom
paniment, at first undecided or uncoordinated,
might become more precise by repetition ; they
would end by sketching a simplified figure in
which the listener would find, in their main lines
and principal directions, the very movements of
the speaker. Thus would unfold itself in con
sciousness, under the form of nascent muscular
sensations, the motor diagram, as it were, of the
speech we hear. To adapt our hearing to a
new language would then consist, at the outset,
neither in modifying the crude sound nor in sup
plementing the sounds with memories ; it would
be to coordinate the motor tendencies of the mus
cular apparatus of the voice to the impressions of
the ear ; it would be to perfect the motor accom
paniment.
In learning a physical exercise, we begin by
CHAP. H RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 137
imitating the movement as a whole, as our eyes
see it from without, as we think we have seen it
done. Our perception of it is confused ; confused
therefore will be the movement whereby we try to
repeat it. But whereas our visual perception was
of a continuous whole, the movement by which we
endeavour to reconstruct the image is compound
and made up of a multitude of muscular contrac
tions and tensions ; and our consciousness of these
itself includes a number of sensations resulting
from the varied play of the articulations. The
confused movement which copies the image is,
then, already its virtual decomposition ; it bears
within itself, so to speak, its own analysis. The
progress which is brought about by repetition and
practice consists merely in unfolding what was
previously wrapped up, in bestowing on each of
the elementary movements that autonomy which
ensures precision, without, however, breaking up
that solidarity with the others without which it
would become useless. We are right when we
say that habit is formed by the repetition of an
effort ; but what would be the use of repeating
it, if the result were always to reproduce the same
thing ? The true effect of repetition is to decom
pose, and then to recompose, and thus appeal to
the intelligence of the body. At each new attempt
it separates movements which were interpenetrat
ing; each time it calls the attention of the body
to a new detail which had passed unperceived ;
it bids the body discriminate and classify; it
138 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11
teaches what is the essential ; it points out,
one after another, within the total movement,
the lines that mark off its internal structure.
In this sense, a movement is learnt when the
body has been made to understand it.
So a motor accompaniment of speech may well
break the continuity of the mass of sound. But we
But this have now to point out in what this
Smpanfment accompaniment consists. Is it speech
peech r !Ldi- itself , repeated internally ? If this were
Sts slS so * ne child would be able to repeat all
outlines. the words that its ear can distinguish ;
and we ourselves should only need to understand
a foreign language to be able to pronounce it
with a correct accent. The matter is far from
being so simple. I may be able to catch a tune,
to follow its phrasing, even to fix it in memory,
without being able to sing it. I can easily dis
tinguish the peculiarities of inflexion and tone in
an Englishman speaking German I correct him
therefore, mentally ; but it by no means follows
that I could give the right inflexion and tone to
the German phrase, if I were to utter it. Here,
moreover, the observation of every-day life is
confirmed by clinical facts. It is still possible to
follow and understand speech when one has be
come incapable of speaking. Motor aphasia does
not involve word deafness.
This is because the diagram, by means of which
we divide up the speech we hear, indicates only
its salient outlines. It is to speech itself what
CHA*. 11 RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 139
the rough sketch is to the finished picture. For it
is one thing to understand a difficult movement,
another to be able to carry it out. To under
stand it, we need only to realize in it what is
essential, just enough to distinguish it from all
other possible movements. But to be able to
carry it out, we must besides have brought our
body to understand it. Now, the logic of the body
admits of no tacit implications. It demands
that all the constituent parts of the required
movement shall be set forth one by one, and
then put together again. Here a complete analysis
is necessary, in which no detail is neglected,
and an actual synthesis, in which nothing is
curtailed. The imagined diagram, composed of
a few nascent muscular sensations, is but a sketch.
The muscular sensations, really and completely
experienced, give it colour and life.
It remains to be considered how an accom
paniment of this kind can be produced, and
Evidence whether it really is always produced.
Ss o?^ We know that in order effectively to
aphasia, in pronounce a word the tongue and lips
must articulate, the larynx must be
brought into play for phonation, and
affected. fa e muscles of the chest must produce
an expiratory movement of air. Thus, to every
syllable uttered there corresponds the play of a
number of mechanisms already prepared in the
cerebral and bulbar centres. These mechanisms
are joined to the higher centres of the cortex by
I4O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
the axis-cylinder processes of the pyramidal cells
in the psycho-motor zone. Along this path the
impulse of the will travels. So, when we desire
to articulate this or that sound, we transmit the
order to act to this or that group of motor me
chanisms selected from among them all. But,
while the ready-made mechanisms which corres
pond to the various possible movements of articu
lation and phonation are connected with the causes
(whatever these may be) which set them to work
in voluntary speech, there are facts which put
beyond all doubt the linkage of these same mechan
isms with the auditory perception of words. First
of all, among the numerous varieties of aphasia de
scribed in clinical reports, we know of two (Licht-
heim s 4th and 6th forms) which appear to imply
a relation of this kind. Thus, in a case observed
by Lichtheim himself, the subject had lost, as the
result of a fall, the memory of the articulation
of words, and consequently the faculty of spon
taneous speech ; yet he repeated quite correctly
what was said to him. 1 On the other hand, in
cases where spontaneous speech is unaffected,
but where word deafness is absolute and the
patient no longer understands what is said to
him, the faculty of repeating another person s words
may still be completely retained. 8 It may be
said, with Bastian, that these phenomena merely
point to a fatigue of the articulatory or auditive
1 Lichtheim, On Aphasia (Brain, Jan. 1885, p. 447).
2 Ibid., p. 454.
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 14!
memory of words, the acoustic impressions only
serving to awaken that memory from its torpor. 1
We may have to allow for this hypothesis, but it
does not appear to us to account for the curious
phenomena of echolalia, long since pointed out
by Romberg, 2 Voisin 8 and Forbes Winslow, 4
which are termed by Kussmaul 5 (probably with
some exaggeration) acoustic reflexes. Here the
subject repeats mechanically, and perhaps uncon
sciously, the words he hears, as though the auditory
sensations converted themselves automatically
into movements of articulation. From these
facts some have inferred that there is a special
mechanism which unites a so-called acoustic cen
tre of words with an articulatory centre of speech. 6
The truth appears to lie between these two hypo
theses. There is more in these various phenomena
than absolutely mechanical actions, but less than
an appeal to voluntary memory. They testify
to a tendency of verbal auditory impressions to
1 Bastian, On Different Kinds of Aphasia (British Medical
Journal, Oct. and Nov. 1887, p. 935).
a Romberg, Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, 1853, vol. ii.
8 Quoted by Bateman, On Aphasia. London, 1890, p. 79.
Cf. Marce", Memoire sur quelques observations de physiologic
pathologique (Mem. de la Soc. de Biologie, 2nd series, vol. ii,
p. 102).
4 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain.
London, 1861, p. 505.
6 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, Leipzig. 1877, PP-
55 et seq.
Arnaud, Contribution a V etude clinique de la surdite verbale
(Arch, de neurologie, 1886, p. 192). Spamer, Ueber Asymbolie
(Arch. /. Psychiatrie, vol. vi, pp. 507 and 524).
142 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
prolong themselves in movements of articulation ;
a tendency which assuredly does not escape, as
a rule, the control of the will, perhaps even im
plies a rudimentary discrimination, and expresses
itself, in the normal state, by an internal repe
tition of the striking features of the words that
are heard. Now our motor diagram is nothing
else.
Considering this hypothesis more closely, we
shall perhaps find in it the psychological explana
tion, which we were just now seeking, of certain
forms of word deafness. A few cases of word
deafness are known where there was a com
plete survival of acoustic memory. The patient
had retained, unimpaired, both the auditive
memory of words and the sense of hearing ;
yet he recognized no word that was said to
him. 1 A subcortical lesion is here supposed,
which prevents the acoustic impressions from
going to join the verbal auditory images in the
cortical centres where they are supposed to be
deposited. But, in the first place, the question
is whether the brain can store up images. And,
secondly, even if it were proved that there is
some lesion in the paths that the acoustic impres
sions have to follow, we should still be compelled
to seek a psychological interpretation of the final
1 See, in particular : P. Serieux, Sur un cos de surdite
verbale pure (Revue de Medecine, 1893, p. 733 et seq.) ; Licht-
heim, loc. cit., p. 461 ; and Arnaud, Contrib. d I etude de la
surdite vcrbtde (2 article), Arch, de Neurologic, 1886, p. 366.
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 143
result. For, by hypothesis, the auditory memories
can still be recalled to consciousness ; by hypo
thesis also, the auditory impressions still reach
consciousness ; there must therefore be in con
sciousness itself a gap, a solution of continuity,
something, whatever it is, which hinders the
perception from joining the memories. Now, we
may throw some light on the case if we remember
that crude auditory perception is really that of
a continuity of sound, and that the sensori-motor
connexions established by habit must have as
their office, in the normal state, to decompose this
continuity. A lesion of these conscious mechan
isms, by hindering the decomposition, might
completely check the up-rush of memories which
tend to alight upon the corresponding perceptions.
Therefore the motor diagram might be what is
injured by the lesion. If we pass in review the
cases (which are, indeed, not very numerous) of
word deafness where acoustic memories were
retained, we notice certain details that are inter
esting in this respect. Adler notes, as a remark
able fact in word deafness, that the patients no
longer react even to the loudest sounds, though
their hearing has preserved all its acuteness. 1
In other words, sound no longer finds in them its
motor echo A patient of Charcot s, attacked by
a passing word deafness, relates that he heard
his clock strike, but that he could not count the
1 Adler, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der seltneren Formen von
nensorischtr Aphasie (Neurol. Centralblatt, 1891, p. 296 et eq.).
144 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
strokes. 1 Probably he was unable to separate
and distinguish them. Another patient declares
that he perceives the words of a conversation,
but as a confused noise. 2 Lastly, the patient
who has lost the understanding of the spoken
word recovers it if the word is repeated to him
several times, and especially if it is pronounced
with marked divisions, syllable by syllable. 3
This last fact, observed in several cases of word
deafness where acoustic memories were unim
paired, is particularly significant.
Strieker s 4 mistake was to believe in a complete
internal repetition of the words that are heard.
His assertion is already contradicted by the
simple fact that we do not know of a single
case of motor aphasia which brought out word
deafness. But all the facts combine to prove
the existence of a motor tendency to separate
the sounds and to establish their diagram. This
automatic tendency is not without (as we said
above) a certain elementary mental effort : how
otherwise could we identify with each other,
and consequently follow with the same diagram,
1 Bernard, De I Aphasie. Paris, 1889, p. 143.
1 Ballet, Le langage interieur. Paris, 1888, p. 85.
8 See the three cases cited by Arnaud in the Archives de
neurologic, 1886, p. 366 et seq. (Contrib. clinique a I elude de la
surdite verbale, 2? article). Cf. Schmidt s case, Gehors- und
Sprachstdrung in Folgc von Apoplexic (Allg. Zeitschriften /.
Psychiatric, 1871, vol. xxvii, p. 304).
4 Strieker, Studien iiber die Sprachvorstellung. Vienna, 1880.
CHAP, it REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 145
similar words pronounced on different notes
and by different qualities of voice ? These
inner movements of repeating and recognizing
are like a prelude to voluntary attention. They
mark the limit between the voluntary and the
automatic. By them, as we hinted before, the
characteristic phenomena of intellectual recogni
tion are first prepared and then determined.
But what is this complete and fully conscious
recognition ?
2. We come to the second part of our subject :
from movements we pass to memories. We have
Transition to sa ^ that attentive recognition ie a kind
?* of ^ circuit, in which the external object
to us deeper and deeper parts
itself, as our memory adopts a
n?- correspondingly higher degree of tension
cai process. j n or( j er to project recollections towards
it. In the particular case we are now considering,
the object is an interlocutor whose ideas develop
within his consciousness into auditory representa
tions which are then materialized into uttered
words. So, if we are right, the hearer places him
self at once in the midst of the corresponding ideas,
and then develops them into acoustic memories
which go out to overlie the crude sounds perceived,
while fitting themselves into the motor diagram.
To follow an arithmetical addition is to do it
over again for ourselves. To understand another s
words is, in like manner, to reconstruct intelli-
L
146 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
gently, starting from the ideas, the continuity of
sound which the ear perceives. And, more gener
ally, to attend, to recognize intellectually, to
interpret, may be summed up in a single opera
tion whereby the mind, having chosen its level,
having selected within itself, with reference to
the crude perceptions, the point that is exactly
symmetrical with their more or less immediate
cause, allows to flow towards them the memories
that will go out to overlie them.
Such, however, is certainly not the usual way
of looking at the matter. The associationist habit
is there ; and, in accordance with it, we find men
maintaining that, by the mere effect of contiguity,
the perception of a sound brings back the memory
of the sound and memories bring back the cor
responding ideas. And then, we have the cerebral
lesions which seem to bring about a destruction of
memories ; more particularly, in the case we are
studying, there are the lesions of the brain found
in word deafness. Thus psychological observa
tions and clinical facts seem to conspire. To
gether they seem to point to the existence, within
the cortex, of auditory memories slumbering,
whether as a physico-chemical modification of cer
tain cells or under some other form. A sensory
stimulation is then supposed to awaken them ;
and, finally, by an intra-cerebral process, perhaps
by trans-cortical movements that go to find the
complementary representations, they are supposed
to evoke ideas.
CHAT, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 147
Now consider lor a moment the amazing con
sequences of an hypothesis of this kind. The
auditory image of a word is not an
object with well-defined outlines; for
tne same word pronounced by different
theS 8 woSd voices, or by the same voice on different
dbwte notes > g ives a different sound. So, if
Y ou adopt the hypothesis of which we
have been speaking, you must assume
that there are as many auditory images
of the same word as there are pitches of
sound and qualities of voice. Do you mean that
all these images are treasured up in the brain ?
Or is it that the brain chooses ? If the brain
chooses one of them, whence comes its pre
ference ? Suppose, even, that you can explain
why the brain chooses one or the other ; how
is it that this same word, uttered by a new
person, gives a sound which, although different,
is still able to rejoin the same memory ? For
you must bear in mind that this memory is
supposed to be an inert and passive thing and
consequently incapable of discovering, beneath
external differences, an internal similitude. You
speak of the auditory image of a word as if it
were an entity or a genus : such a genus can,
indeed, be constructed by an active memory
which extracts the resemblance of several com
plex sounds and only retains, as it were, their
common diagram. But, for a brain that is sup
posed nay, is bound to record only the materi-
MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
ality of the sounds perceived, there must be, of
one and the same word, thousands of distinct
images. Uttered by a new voice, it will constitute a
new image, which will simply be added to the others.
But there is something still more perplexing.
A word has an individuality for us only from the
moment that we have been taught to abstract
it. What we first hear are short phrases, not words.
A word is always continuous with the other
words which accompany it, and takes different
aspects according to the cadence and movement
of the sentence in which it is set : just as each
note of a melody vaguely reflects the whole musi
cal phrase. Suppose, then, that there are indeed
model auditory memories, consisting in certain
intra-cerebral arrangements, and lying in wait for
analogous impressions of sound : these impressions
may come, but they will pass unrecognized. How
could there be a common measure, how could
there be a point of contact, between the dry,
inert, isolated image and the living reality of the
word organized with the rest of the phrase ?
I understand clearly enough that beginning of auto
matic recognition which would consist, as I have
said above, in emphasizing inwardly the principal
divisions of the sentence that is heard, and so
in adopting its movement. But, unless we are to
suppose in all men identical voices pronouncing
in the same tone the same stereotyped phrases,
I fail to see how the words we hear are able to
rejoin their images in the brain.
CHAP. n. REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 149
Now, if memories are really deposited in the
cortical cells, we should find in sensory aphasia,
The pheno- for instance, the irreparable loss of
sory aphasia do certain determined words, the integral
not point to the . . , _^
existence of Conservation OI Others. But, as a mat-
but suggest a ter of fact, things happen quite differ-
very different , . . . , . .
hypothesis. entry, bometimes it is the whole set
of memories that disappears, the faculty of
mental hearing being purely and simply abol
ished ; sometimes there is a general weakening of
the function ; but it is usually the function which
is diminished and not the number of recollections.
It seems as if the patient had no longer strength
to grasp his acoustic memories, as if he turned
round about the verbal image without being able
to hit upon it. To enable him to recover a word
it is often enough to put him on the track of it,
by giving him its first syllable, 1 or even by merely
encouraging him. 2 An emotion may produce
the same effect. 8 There are, however, cases in
which it does indeed seem that definite groups
of representations have disappeared from memory.
I have passed in review a large number of these
facts, and it has seemed that they could be referred
1 Bernard, op. tit., pp. 172 and 179. Cf. Babilde, Les troubles
de la memoire dans I alcoolisme. Paris, 1886 (medical thesis),
P- 44-
2 Rieger, Bcschreibung der Intelligenzstorungen in Folge
einer Hirnverletzung. Wurzburg, 1889, p. 35.
8 Wernicke, Der aphasische Symptomencomplex. Breslau,
1874, p. 39. Cf. Valentin, Sur un cas d aphasie d origine
traumatiqne (Revue medicale de I Est, 1880, p. 171).
I5O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
to two absolutely distinct categories. In the
first, the loss of memories is usually abrupt ;
in the second, it is progressive. In the first, the
recollections detached from memory are arbitrarily
and even capriciously chosen : they may be certain
words, certain figures, or often all the words
of an acquired language. In the second, the
disappearance of the words is governed by a
methodical and grammatical order, that which is
indicated by Ribot s law : proper names go first,
then common nouns, and lastly verbs. 1 Such
are the external differences. Now this, I believe,
is the internal difference. In the amnesias of the
first type, which are nearly always the result of
a violent shock, I incline to think that the
memories which are apparently destroyed are
really present, and not only present but acting.
To take an example frequently borrowed from
Forbes Winslow, 2 that of a patient who had
forgotten the letter F, and the letter F only,
I wonder how it is possible to subtract a given
letter wherever met with, to detach it, that
is, from the spoken or written words in which
it occurs, if it were not first implicitly re
cognized. In another case cited by the same
author, the patient had forgotten languages
1 Ribot, Les maladies de la memoir e. Paris, 1881, p. 131
et seq.
2 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. London,
1861.
3 Ibid., p. 372
CHAP, n REALIZATION OF MEMORIES
he had learnt and poems he had written. Hav
ing begun to write again, he reproduced nearly
the same lines. Moreover, in such cases the patient
may often recover the lost memories. Without
wishing to be too dogmatic on a question of this
kind, we cannot avoid noticing the analogy be
tween these phenomena and that dividing of
the self of which instances have been described
by Pierre Janet : l some of them bear a remark
able resemblance to the negative hallucinations/
and suggestions with point de replre, induced by
hypnotizers. 2 Entirely different are the aphasias
of the second kind, which are indeed the true
aphasias. These are due, as we shall try to
show presently, to the progressive diminution
of a well- localized function, the faculty of actual
izing the recollection of words. How are we to
explain the fact that amnesia here follows a
methodical course, beginning with proper nouns
and ending with verbs ? We could hardly explain
it if the verbal images were really deposited in
1 Pierre Janet, Etat mental des hysteriques. Paris, 1894,
vol. ii, p. 263 et seq. Cf. UAutomatisme psychologique, by
the same author, Paris, 1889.
2 See Grashey s case, studied afresh by Sommer, and by
him declared to be inexplicable by the existing theories of
aphasia. In this instance, the movements executed by the
patient seem to me to have been signals addressed by him
to an independent memory. (Sommer, Zur Psychologic der
Sprache, Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. der Sinnesorgane, vol.
ii, 1891, p. 143 et seq.) Cf. Sommer s paper at the Con
gress of German Alienists, Arch, de Neurologie, vol. xxiv, 1892).
152 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
the cells of the cortex : it would be wonderful
indeed that disease should always attack these
cells in the same order. 1 But the fact can be
explained, if we admit that memories need, for
their actualization, a motor ally, and that they
require for their recall a kind of mental attitude
which must itself be engrafted upon an attitude
of the body. If such be the case, verbs in gene
ral, which essentially express imitable actions, are
precisely the words that a bodily effort might
enable us to recapture when the function of
language has all but escaped us : proper names,
on the other hand, being of all words the most
remote from those impersonal actions which our
body can sketch out, are those which a weaken
ing of the function will earliest affect. It is a
noteworthy fact that the aphasic patient, who
has become as a rule incapable of finding
the noun he seeks, may replace it by an
appropriate periphrasis into which other nouns, 2
and perhaps even the evasive noun itself,
enter. Unable to think of the precise word,
he has thought of the corresponding action, and
this attitude has determined the general direction
of a movement from which the phrase then
springs. So likewise it may happen to any of us.
that, having retained the initial of a forgotten
name, we recover the name by repeating the
1 Wundt, Grundzuge der physiologische Psychologic.
Leipzig, 1903, vol i, 314-315.
2 Bernard, De Vaphasie. Paris, 1889, pp. 171 and 174.
CHAP. H REALIZATION OF MEMORIES IJ3
initial. 1 Therefore, in facts of the second kind,
it is the function that is attacked as a whole,
and in those of the first kind the forgetting,
though in appearance more complete, is never
really final. Neither in the one case nor in the
other do we find memories localized in certain
cells of the cerebral substance and abolished by
their destruction.
But let us question our own consciousness, and
ask of it what happens when we listen to the words
whatintro- f another person with the desire to
to?ayoii 1 the understand them. Do we passively wait
for the impressions to go in search of
their images ? Do we not rather feel that we
are adopting a certain disposition which varies
with our interlocutor, with the language he
speaks, with the nature of the ideas which he
expresses, and varies, above all, with the general
movement of his phrase, as though we were choos
ing the key in which our own intellect is called
upon to play ? The motor diagram, emphasizing
his utterance, following through all its windings
the curve of his thought, shows our thought the
road. It is the empty vessel, which determines,
by its form, the form which the fluid mass, rush
ing into it, already tends to take.
But psychologists may be unwilling to explain
1 Graves cites the case of a patient who had forgotten all
names but remembered their initial, and by that means was
able to recover them (quoted by Bernard, De I aphasie,
p. 179).
154 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
in this way the mechanism of interpretation,
current errors because of the invincible tendency which
Surtare impels us to think on all occasions of
te u ndency e oi things rather than of movements. We
to have said that we start from the idea,
and that we develop it into auditory
movement, memory-images capable of inserting
themselves in the motor diagram, so as to over
lie the sounds we hear. We have here a con
tinuous movement, by which the nebulosity of
the idea is condensed into distinct auditory
images, which, still fluid, will be finally solidified as
they coalesce with the sounds materially perceived
At no moment is it possible to say with precision
that the idea or the memory-image ends, that the
memory-image or the sensation begins. And, in
fact, where is the dividing line between the confu
sion of sounds perceived in the lump and the clear
ness which the remembered auditory images add to
them, between the discontinuity of these remem
bered images themselves and the continuity of
the original idea which they dissociate and refract
into distinct words ? But scientific thought,
analysing this unbroken series of changes, and
yielding to an irresistible need of symbolic present
ment, arrests and solidifies into finished things the
principal phases of this development. It erects
the crude sounds heard into separate and complete
words, then the remembered auditory images into
entities independent of the idea they develop :
these three terms, crude perception, auditory image
CHAP, it REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 155
and idea, are thus made into distinct wholes
of which each is supposed to be self-sufficing.
And while, if we really confined ourselves to pure
experience, the idea is what we should start from
since it is to the idea that the auditory memories
owe their connexion and since it is by the memo
ries that the crude sounds become completed,
on the contrary, when once we have arbitrarily
supposed the crude sound to be by itself com
plete, and arbitrarily also assumed the memories
to be connected together, we see no harm in re
versing the real order of the processes, and in
asserting that we go from the perception to the
memories and from the memories to the idea.
Nevertheless, we cannot help feeling that we must
bring back again, under one form or another, at
one moment or another, the continuity which we
have thus broken between the perception, the mem
ory and the idea. So we make out that these three
things, each lodged in a certain portion of the cortex
or of the medulla, intercommunicate, the percep
tions going to awaken the auditory memories,
and the memories going to rouse up the ideas.
As we have begun by solidifying into distinct and
independent things what were only phases the
main phases of a continuous development, we
go on materializing the development itself into
lines of communication, contacts and impulsions.
But not with impunity can we thus invert the
true order, and as a necessary consequence, intro
duce into each term of the series elements which
15^ MATTER AND MEMORY eA*. it
are only realized by those that follow. Not with
impunity, either, can we congeal into distinct and
independent things the fluidity of a continuous
undivided process. This symbolism may indeed
suffice as long as it is strictly limited to the facts
which jhave served to invent it : but each new
fact will force us to complicate our diagram, to in
sert new stations along the line of the movement ;
and yet all these stations laid side by side will
never be able to reconstitute the movement itself.
Nothing is more instructive, in this regard, than
the history of the diagrams of sensory apha
sia. In the early period, marked by
Illustrations , _. Tr J
from the the work of Charcot, 1 Broadbent, 2 Kuss-
theories oi maul 3 and Lichtheim, 4 the theorists
confined themselves to the hypothesis
of an ideational centre linked by transcortical
paths to the various speech centres. But, as
the analysis of cases was pushed further, this
centre for ideas receded and finally disap
peared. For, while the physiology of the brain
was more and more successful in localizing sensa
tions and movements, but never ideas, the diversity
of sensory aphasias obliged clinicians to break up
1 Bernard, De I aphasie, p. 37.
2 Broadbent, A Case of Peculiar Affection of Speech (Brain,
1879, p. 494).
8 Kussmaul, Die Stdrungen der Sprache. Leipzig, 1877,
p. 182.
4 Lichtheim, On Aphasia (Brain, 1885). Yet we must note
the fact that Wernicke, the first to study sensory aphasia
methodically, was able to do without a centre for concepts
(Der aphasische Symptomencotnplex. Breslau, 1874).
CHAP. ii. REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 157
the intellectual centre into a growing multiplicity
of image centres a centre for visual representa
tions, for tactile representations, for auditory
representations, etc., nay, to divide sometimes
into two different tracks, the one ascending and
the other descending, the line of communication
between any two of them. 1 This was the charac
teristic feature of the diagrams of the later period,
those of Wysman, 8 of Moeli, 8 of Freud, 4 etc.
Thus the theory grew more and more compli
cated, yet without ever being able to grasp the
full complexity of reality. And as the diagrams
became more complicated, they figured and sug
gested the possibility of lesions which, just because
they were more diverse, were more special and more
simple, the complication of the diagram being due
precisely to that dissociation of centres which had
at first been confounded. Experience, however,
was far from justifying the theory at this point,
since it nearly always showed, in partial and diverse
combinations, several of those simple psychical
1 Bastian, On Different Kinds of Aphasia (Brit. Med. Journal,
1887). Cf. the explanation (indicated merely as possible)
of optical aphasia by Bernheim : De la cecite psychique des
choses (Revue de Medecine, 1885).
2 Wysman, Aphasic und verwandte Zustdnde (Deutches
Archiv. fur Klinische Medecin, 1880). Magnan had already
opened the way, as Skwortzoff s diagram indicates, De
la cecite des mots (Th. de Med., 1881, pi. i).
8 Moeli, Ueber Aphasie bei Wahrnehmung der Gegenstdnde
durch das Gesicht (Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, 28 Apr.,
1890).
4 Freud, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien. Leipzig, 1891.
158 MATTER AND MEMORY
lesions which the theory isolated. The complica
tion of the theories of aphasia being thus self-
destructive, it is no wonder that modern patho
logy, becoming more and more sceptical with
regard to diagrams, is returning purely and simply
to the description of facts. 1
But how could it be otherwise ? To hear some
theorists discourse on sensory aphasia, we might
imagine that they had never considered with any
care the structure of a sentence. They argue as if
a sentence were composed of nouns which call up
the images of things. What becomes of those
parts of speech, of which the precise function is to
establish, between images, relations and shades of
meaning of every kind ? Is it said that each of
such words still expresses and evokes a material
image, more confused, no doubt, but yet deter
mined ? Consider then the host of different rela
tions which can be expressed by the same word,
according to the place it occupies and the terms
which it unites. Is it urged that these are the
refinements of a highly-developed language, but
that speech is possible with concrete nouns that
all summon up images of things ? No doubt
it is, but the more primitive the language you
speak with me and the poorer in words which
express relations, the more you are bound to
allow for my mind s activity, since you compel
me to find out the relations which you leave
1 Sommer, Addressing a Congress of Alienists. (Arch,
de Neurologic, vol. xxiv, 1892).
CHAP, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 159
unexpressed : which amounts to saying that you
abandon more and more the hypothesis that
each verbal image goes up and fetches down its
corresponding idea. In truth, there is here only
a question of degree : every language, whether
elaborated or crude, leaves many more things to
be understood than it is able to express. Essen
tially discontinuous, since it proceeds by juxta
posing words, speech can only indicate by a few
guide-posts placed here and there the chief
stages in the movement of thought. That is why
I can indeed understand your speech if I start
from a thought analogous to your own, and follow
its windings by the aid of verbal images which
are so many sign-posts that show me the way
from time to time. But I shall never be able
to understand it if I start from the verbal
images themselves, because between two conse
cutive verbal images there is a gulf which no
amount of concrete representations can ever fill.
For images can never be anything but things,
and thought is a movement.
It is vain, therefore, to treat memory-images
and ideas as ready-made things, and then assign
Attempts to to them an abiding place in problemati-
locaiize images ca j centres. Nor is it of any avail to
in the brain J
Scted b n ~ disguise the hypothesis under the cover
psychological o f a language borrowed from anatomy
analysis, . J
and physiology ; it is nothing but the
association theory of mind ; it has nothing in its
favour but the constant tendency of discursive
l6o MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
intellect to cut up all progress into phases and
afterwards to solidify these phases into things;
and since it is born a priori from a kind of
metaphysical prepossession, it has neither the
advantage of following the movement of con
sciousness nor that of simplifying the explana
tion of the facts.
But we must follow this illusion up to the point
where it issues in a manifest contradiction. We
have said that ideas, pure recollections
And moreover \
contradict summoned from the depths of memory,
themselves.
develop into memory-images more and
more capable of inserting themselves into the
motor diagram. In the degree that these recol
lections take the form of a more complete,
more concrete and more conscious represen
tation, do they tend to confound themselves
with the perception which attracts them or of
which they adopt the outline. Therefore there
is not, there cannot be in the brain a region in
which memories congeal and accumulate. The
alleged destruction of memories by an injury to
the brain is but a break in the continuous pro
gress by which they actualize themselves. And,
consequently, if we insist on localizing the auditory
memory of words, for instance, in a given part of
the brain, we shall be led by equally cogent reasons
to distinguish this image-centre from the percep
tive centre or to confound the two in one. Now
this is just what experience teaches.
For notice the strange contradiction to which
CHAP, it REALIZATION OF MEMORIES l6l
this theory is led by psychological analysis on
the one hand, by pathological facts on the other.
On the one hand, it would seem that if percep
tion, once it has taken place, remains in the brain
in the state of a stored-up memory, this can
only be as an acquired disposition of the very
elements that perception has affected : how,
at what precise moment, can it go in search of
others ? This is, indeed, the most natural hypo
thesis, and Bain 1 and Ribot 2 are content to
rest upon it. But, on the other hand, there is
pathology, which tells us that all the recollections
of a certain kind may have gone while the
corresponding faculty of perception remains
unimpaired. Psychic blindness does not hinder
seeing, any more than psychic deafness hinders
hearing. More particularly, in regard to the
loss of the auditory memory of words the
only one we are now considering there are a
number of facts which show it to be regularly
associated with a destructive lesion of the first and
second left temporo-sphenoidal convolutions, 3
though not a single case is on record in which this
lesion was the cause of deafness properly so-called :
1 The Senses and the Intellect, p. 329. Cf . Spencer, Principles
of Psychology, vol. i., p. 456.
2 Ribot, Les maladies de la memoire. Paris, 1881, p. 10.
8 See an enumeration of the most typical cases in Shaw s
article, The Sensory Side of Aphasia (Brain, 1893, p. 501).
Several authors, however, limit to the first convolution the
lesion corresponding to the loss of verbal auditory images.
See, in particular, Ballet, Le langage interieur, p. 153.
l62 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
it has even been produced experimentally in the
monkey without determining anything but psychic
deafness, that is to say, a loss of the power to
interpret the sounds which it was still able to
hear. 1 So that we must attribute to perception
and to memory separate nervous elements. But
then this hypothesis will be contradicted by the
most elementary psychological observation ; for
we see that a memory, as it becomes more dis
tinct and more intense, tends to become a percep
tion, though there is no precise moment at which
a radical transformation takes place, nor conse
quently a moment when we can say that it moves
forward from imaginative elements to sensory ele
ments. Thus these two contrary hypotheses, the
first identifying the elements of perception with
the elements of memory, the second distinguish
ing them, are of such a nature that each sends
us back to the other without allowing us to
rest in either.
How should it be otherwise ? Here again
distinct perception and memory-image are taken
The memory- in the static condition, as things of
image passes, , . .. . ., . , , , ,
by a dynamic which the first is supposed to be al-
the K percept1on ready complete without the second ;
Smes 1C actuai. whereas we ought to consider the dyna
mic progress by which the one passes into the
other.
For, on the one hand, complete perception is
1 Luciani, quoted by J. Soury, Les fonctions du cerveau,
Paris, 1892, p. 211.
CHAP, n REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 163
only defined and distinguished by its coalescence
with a memory-image, which we send forth to meet
it. Only thus is attention secured, and without
attention there is but a passive juxtapositing of
sensations, accompanied by a mechanical reaction.
But, on the other hand, as we shall show later, the
memory-image itself, if it remained pure memory,
would be ineffectual. Virtual, this memory can
only become actual by means of the perception
which attracts it. Powerless, it borrows life and
strength from the present sensation in which it
is materialized. Does not this amount to saying
that distinct perception is brought about by two
opposite currents, of which the one, centripetal,
comes from the external object, and the other,
centrifugal, has for its point of departure that
which we term pure memory ? The first
current, alone, would only give a passive percep
tion with the mechanical reactions which accom
pany it. The second, left to itself, tends to give
a recollection that is actualized more and more
actual as the current becomes more marked.
Together, these two currents make up, at their
point of confluence, the perception that is distinct
and recognized.
This is the witness of introspection. But
we have no right to stop there. Undoubtedly
there is considerable risk in venturing, without
sufficient evidence, into the obscure problems
of cerebral localization. But we have said that
to separate from one another the completed per-
164 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n
ception and the memory image is to bring clini
cal observation into conflict with psychological
analysis, and that the result is a serious antino
my in the theory of the localization of memories.
We are bound to consider what becomes of the
known facts when we cease to regard the brain
as a storehouse of memories. 1
Let us admit, for the moment, in order to simpli-
1 The theory which is here sketched out resembles,
in one respect, that of Wundt. We will give the common
element and the essential difference between them. With
Wundt, we believe that distinct perception implies a centri
fugal action ; and thereby we are led to suppose with him
(although in a slightly different sense), that the so-called
image centres are rather centres for the grouping of
sense-impressions. But whereas, according to Wundt, the
centrifugal action lies in an apperceptive stimulation, the
nature of which can only be defined in a general manner,
and which appears to correspond to what is commonly called
the fixing of the attention, we maintain that this centrifugal
action bears in each case a distinct form, the very form of
that virtual object which tends to actualize itself by
successive stages. Hence an important difference in our
understanding of the office of the centres. Wundt is led to
assume : ist, a general organ of apperception, occupying
the frontal lobe ; 2ndly, particular centres which, though
most likely incapable of storing images, retain nevertheless
a tendency or a disposition to reproduce them. Our con
tention, on the contrary, is that no trace of an image can
remain in the substance of the brain, and that no such centre
of apperception can exist ; but that there are merely, in that
substance, organs of virtual perception, influenced by the
intention of the memory, as there are at the periphery organs
of real perception, influenced by the action of the object. (See
Grundziige der physiologische Psychologic, vol. i, pp. 320-327.)
CHAP, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 165
fy the argument, that stimuli from without give
u any image- birth, either in the cortex or in other
centre really , , ,
exists, it is cerebral centres, to elementary sensa-
kind oj key- tions. In fact, every perception includes
board, played . , , , , e , . .
upon by mem- a considerable number of such sensations,
ories, as the ,, ... , , . -, .
sense-organ is all co-existing and arranged in a deter-
by obje3s! n mined order. Whence comes this order,
and what ensures this co-existence ? In the case
of a present material object, there is no doubt as to
the answer : order and co-existence come from
an organ of sense, receiving the impression of an
external object. This organ is constructed pre
cisely with a view to allowing a plurality of simul
taneous excitants to impress it in a certain order
and in a certain way, by distributing themselves,
all at one time, over selected portions of its sur
face. It is like an immense keyboard, on which
the external object executes at once its harmony of
a thousand notes, thus calling forth in a definite
order, and at a single moment, a great multitude
of elementary sensations corresponding to all the
points of the sensory centre that are concerned.
Now, suppress the external object or the organ of
sense, or both : the same elementary sensations may
be excited, for the same strings are there, ready
to vibrate in the same way ; but where is the
keyboard which permits thousands of them to be
struck at once, and so many single notes to
unite in one accord ? In our opinion the region
of images, if it exists, can only be a keyboard
of this nature. Certainly it is in no way incon-
l66 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, it
ceivable that a purely psychical cause should
directly set in action all the strings concerned.
But in the case of mental hearing which alone
we are considering now the localization of the
function appears certain, since a definite injury of
the temporal lobe abolishes it ; and, on the other
hand, we have set forth the reasons which make
it impossible for us to admit, or even to conceive,
traces of images deposited in any region of the
cerebral substance. Hence only one plausible hy
pothesis remains, namely, that this region occupies
with regard to the centre of hearing itself the
place that is exactly symmetrical with the organ
of sense. It is, in this case, a mental ear.
But then the contradiction we have spoken of
disappears. We see, on the one hand, that the
auditory image called back by memory must set
in motion the same nervous elements as the first
perception, and that recollection must thus change
gradually into perception. And we see also, on
the other hand, that the faculty of recalling
to memory complex sounds, such as words,
may concern other parts of the nervous sub
stance than does the faculty of perceiving them.
This is why in psychic deafness real hearing
survives mental hearing. The strings are still
there, and to the influence of external sounds
they vibrate still; it is the internal keyboard
which is lacking.
In other terms, the centres in which the ele
mentary sensations seem to originate may be actu-
CHAP, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 167
ated, in some sort, from two different sides, from
in front and from behind. From the front they
receive impressions sent in by the sense-organs,
and consequently by a real object ; from behind
they are subject, through successive intermedi
aries, to the influence of a virtual object. The
centres of images, if these exist, can only be the
organs that are exactly symmetrical with the
organs of the senses in reference to the sensory
centres. They are no more the depositories of
pure memories, that is, of virtual objects, than
the organs of the senses are depositories of real
objects.
We would add that this is but a much abridged
version of what may happen in reality. The
various sensory aphasias are sufficient proof that
the calling up of an auditory image is not a
single act. Between the intention, which is what
we call the pure memory, and the auditory
memory-image properly so called, intermediate
memories are commonly intercalated which must
first have been realized as memory-images in more
or less distant centres. It is, then, by successive
degrees that the idea comes to embody itself in
that particular image which is the verbal image.
Thereby mental hearing may depend upon the
integrity of the various centres and of the paths
which lead to them. But these complications
change nothing at the root of things. Whatever
be the number and the nature of the interven
ing processes, we do not go from the perception
l68 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, a
to the idea, but from the idea to the perception ;
and the essential process of recognition is not
centripetal, but centrifugal.
Here, indeed, the question arises how stimulation
from within can give birth to sensations, either
by its action on the cerebral cortex or on other
centres. But it is clear enough that we have here
only a convenient way of expressing ourselves.
Pure memories, as they become actual, tend to
bring about, within the body, all the corresponding
sensations. But these virtual sensations them
selves, in order to become real, must tend to
urge the body to action, and to impress upon
it those movements and attitudes of which they
are the habitual antecedent. The modifications
in the centres called sensory, modifications
which usually precede movements accomplished
or sketched out by the body and of which the
normal office is to prepare them while they begin
them, are, then, less the real cause of the sensa
tion than the mark of its power and the con
dition of its efficacy. The progress by which the
virtual image realizes itself is nothing else than
the series of stages by which this image gradually
obtains from the body useful actions or use
ful attitudes. The stimulation of the so-called
sensory centres is the last of these stages : it is
the prelude to a motor reaction, the beginning of
an action in space. In other words, the virtual
image evolves towards the virtual sensation, and
the virtual sensation towards real movement : this
CHAP, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 169
movement, in realizing itself, realizes both the
sensation of which it might have been the natural
continuation, and the image which has tried to
embody itself in the sensation. We must now
consider these virtual states more carefully, and,
penetrating further into the internal mechanism of
psychical and psycho-physical actions, show by
what continuous progress the past tends to recon
quer, by actualizing itself, the influence it had
lost.
CHAPTER III
OF THE SURVIVAL OF IMAGES. MEMORY AND
MIND.
To sum up briefly the preceding chapters. We
have distinguished three processes, pure memory,
memory-image, and perception, of which no one,
in fact, occurs apart from the others. Perception
is never a mere contact of the mind with the
object present ; it is
impregnated with
memory-images
Pure memory Memorj image Perception which Complete it aS
A"" ~~B 6 c~ ~~2 they interpret it. The
I memory-image, in its
turn, partakes of the
pure memory,
FIG. 2. *
which it begins to
materialize, and of the perception in which it tends
to embody itself : regarded from the latter point of
view, it might be denned as a nascent perception.
Lastly, pure memory, though independent in
theory, manifests itself as a rule only in the
coloured and living image which reveals it. Sym
bolizing these three terms by the consecutive
segments AB, BC, CD, of the same straight line
170
CHAP, in PURE MEMORY
AD, we may say that our thought describes this
line in a single movement which goes from A to
D, and that it is impossible to say precisely where
one of the terms ends and another begins.
In fact, this is just what consciousness bears
witness to whenever, in order to analyse memory,
it follows the movement of memory at work.
Whenever we are trying to recover a recollection,
to call up some period of our history, we become
conscious of an act sui generis by which we detach
ourselves from the present in order to replace
ourselves, first in the past in general, then in a
certain ^region of the past a work of adjustment,
something like the focussing of a camera. But
our recollection still remains virtual ; we simply
prepare ourselves to receive it by adopting the
appropriate attitude. Little by little it comes into
view like a condensing cloud ; from the virtual
state it passes into the actual ; and as its outlines
become more distinct and its surface takes on
colour, it tends to imitate perception. But it re
mains attached to the past by its deepest roots,
and if, when once realized, it did not retain
something of its original virtuality, if, being a
present state, it were not also something which
stands out distinct from the present, we should
never know it for a memory.
The capital error of associationism is that it
substitutes for this continuity of becoming, which
is the living reality, a discontinuous multiplicity
of elements, inert and juxtaposed. Just because
172 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
each of the elements so constituted contains, by
Association- reason of its origin, something of what
ISfutS?" precedes and also of what follows, it must
ffsifty 11 * 1 take to our eyes the form of a mixed
Sid moving and, so to speak, impure state. But
makes oT^ the principle of associationism requires
that each psychical state should be a
perception. kind Qf ^^ & gimple dement Hence
the necessity for sacrificing, in each of the phases
we have distinguished, the unstable to the stable,
that is to say, the beginning to the end. If we
are dealing with perception, we are asked to see in
it nothing but the agglomerated sensations which
colour it, and to overlook the remembered images
which form its dim nucleus. If it is the remem
bered image that we are considering, we are bidden
to take it already made, realized in a weak per
ception, and to shut our eyes to the pure memory
which this image has progressively developed. In
the rivalry which associationism thus sets up
between the stable and the unstable, perception
is bound to expel the memory-image, and the
memory-image to expel pure memory. And thus
the pure memory disappears altogether. Associa
tionism, cutting in two by a line MO the totality
of the progress AD, sees, in the part OD, only the
sensations which terminate it and which have been
supposed to constitute the whole of perception ;-
and, on the other hand, it reduces.also the part AO
to the realized image which pure memory attains
to as it expands. Psychical life, then, is en-
CHAP, m PURE MEMORY 173
tirely summed up in these two elements, sensation
and image. And as, on the one hand, this
theory drowns in the image the pure memory
which makes the image into an original state,
and, on the other hand, brings the image yet
closer to perception by putting into perception,
in advance, something of the image itself, it ends
by finding between these two states only a differ
ence of degree, or of intensity. Hence the dis
tinction between strong states and weak states, of
which the first are supposed to be set up by us
as perceptions of the present, and the second (why,
no man knows) as representations of the past.
But the truth is that we shall never reach the
past unless we frankly place ourselves within it.
Essentially virtual, it cannot be known as some
thing past unless we follow and adopt the move
ment by which it expands into a present image,
thus emerging from obscurity into the light of day.
In vain do we seek its trace in anything actual
and already realized : we might as well look for
darkness beneath the light. This is, in fact, the
error of associationism : placed in the actual, it
exhausts itself in vain attempts to discover in a
realized and present state the mark of its past
origin, to distinguish memory from perception,
and to erect into a difference in kind that which
it condemned in advance to be but a difference
of magnitude.
To picture is not to remember. No doubt a
recollection, as it becomes actual, tends to live in
174 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. HI
an image ; but the converse is not true, and the
image, pure and simple, will not be referred to the
past unless, indeed, it was in the past that I sought
it, thus following the continuous progress which
brought it from darkness into light. This is what
psychologists too often forget when they conclude,
from the fact that a remembered sensation be
comes more actual the more we dwell upon it,
that the memory of the sensation is the sensation
itself beginning to be. The fact which they allege
is undoubtedly true : the more I strive to recall a
past pain, the nearer I come to feeling it in reality.
But this is easy to understand, since the progress
of a memory precisely consists, as we have said,
in its becoming materialized. The question is:
was the memory of a pain, when it began, really
pain? Because the hypnotized subject ends by
feeling hot when he is repeatedly told that he is
hot, it does not follow that the words of the sug
gestion were themselves hot. Neither must we
conclude that, because the memory of a sensa
tion prolongs itself into that very sensation, the
memory was a nascent sensation : perhaps indeed
this memory plays, with regard to the sensation
which follows it, precisely the part of the hypnotizer
who makes the suggestion. The argument we are
criticizing, presented in this form, is then already of
no value as proof ; but still, it is not yet a vicious
argument, because it profits by the incontestable
truth that memory passes into something else by
becoming actual. The absurdity becomes patent
CHAP, m PURE MEMORY 175
when the argument is inverted (although this
ought to be legitimate on the hypothesis adopted),
that is to say, when the intensity of the sensation is
decreased instead of the intensity of pure memory
being increased. For then, if the two states
differ merely in degree, there should be a given
moment at which the sensation changed into a
memory. If the memory of an acute pain, for
instance, is but a slight pain, inversely an intense
pain which I feel will end, as it grows less, by being
an acute pain remembered. Now the moment
will come, undoubtedly, when it is impossible
for me to say whether what I feel is a slight sen
sation which I experience or a slight sensation
which I imagine (and this is natural, because the
memory-image is already partly sensation); but
never will this weak state appear to me to be
the memory of a strong state. Memory, then, is
something quite different.
But the illusion which consists in establishing
only a difference of degree between memory and
perception is more than a mere consequence of
associationism, more than an accident in the
history of philosophy. Its roots lie deep. It
rests, in the last analysis, on a false idea of the
nature and of the object of external perception.
We are bent on regarding perception as only an
instruction addressed to a pure spirit, as having
a purely speculative interest. Then, as memory
is itself essentially a knowledge of this kind, since its
object is no longer present, we can only find between
176 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
perception and memory a difference of degree
perceptions being then supposed to throw mem-
Bnt memory OI "i es back into the past, and thus to
reserve to themselves the present simply
because right is might. But there is
presenus sen- mucn rnore between past and present
aSd Eerefore t ^ ian a mere difference of degree. My
active. present is that which interests me, which
lives for me, and, in a word, that which summons
me to action ; whereas my past is essentially power
less. We must dwell further on this point. By
contrasting it with present perception we shall
better understand the nature of what we call
pure memory/
For we should endeavour in vain to characterize
the memory of a past state unless we began by
denning the concrete note, accepted by conscious
ness, of present reality. What is, for me, the
present moment ? The essence of time is that
it goes by ; time already gone by is the past, and
we call the present the instant in which it goes
by. But there can be no question here of a
mathematical instant. No doubt there is an
ideal present a pure conception, the indivisible
limit which separates past from future. But the
real, concrete, live present that of which I speak
when I speak of my present perception that
present necessarily occupies a duration. Where
then is this duration placed ? Is it on the hither
or on the further side of the mathematical point
which I determine ideally when I think of the
CHAP, in WHAT THE PRESENT IS 177
present instant ? Quite evidently, it is both on
this side and on that ; and what I call my pre
sent has one foot in my past and another in my
future. In my past, first, because the moment
in which I am speaking is already far from me ;
in my future, next, because this moment is im
pending over the future : it is to the future that I
am tending, and could I fix this indivisible present,
this infinitesimal element of the curve of time,
it is the direction of the future that it would in
dicate. The psychical state, then, that I call
my present/ must be both a perception of the
immediate past and a determination of the im
mediate future. Now the immediate past, in so
far as it is perceived, is, as we shall see, sensation,
since every sensation translates a very long suc
cession of elementary vibrations ; and the im
mediate future, in so far as it is being determined,
is action or movement. My present, then, is both
sensation and movement ; and, since my present
forms an undivided whole, then the movement
must be linked with the sensation, must prolong
it in action. Whence I conclude that my present
consists in a joint system of sensations and
movements. My present is, in its essence, sensori-
motor.
our present This is to sa Y that m Y present con-
materiality o! S ^ S m * ne COnSClOUSneSS that I have
i ? s U unique ** ^ mv body . Having extension in space,
moment o! m y body experiences sensations and at
duration. fa G same time executes movements.
N
178 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
Sensations and movements being localized at de
termined points of this extended body, there can
only be, at a given moment, a single system of
movements and sensations. That is why my pre
sent appears to me to be a thing absolutely deter
mined, and contrasting with my past. Situated
between the matter which influences it and that
on which it has influence, my body is a centre of
action, the place where the impressions received
choose intelligently the path they will follow to
transform themselves into movements accom
plished. Thus it indeed represents the actual
state of my becoming, that part of my duration
which is in process of growth. More generally, in
that continuity of becoming which is reality itself ,
the present moment is constituted by the quasi-
instantaneous section effected by our perception
in the flowing mass ; and this section is precisely
that which we call the material world. Our body
occupies its centre ; it is, in this material world,
that part of which we directly feel the flux ; in
its actual state the actuality of our present lies.
If matter, so far as extended in space, is to be de
fined (as we believe it must) as a present which is
always beginning again, inversely, our present is
the very materiality of our existence, that is to say,
a system of sensations and movements, and nothing
else. And this system is determined, unique for
each moment of duration, just because sensa
tions and movements occupy space, and because
there cannot be in the same place several things
CHAP, in WHAT THE PRESENT IS 179
at the same time. Whence comes it that it has
been possible to misunderstand so simple, so
evident a truth, one which is, moreover, the
very idea of common sense ?
The reason lies simply in the fact that philoso
phers insist on regarding the difference between
But pure actual sensations and pure memory as a
memory, in ,. . , , . , . ,
which each mere difference in degree, and not in kind.
unique mo- T , ,.-, . ,. .
ment of the In our view the difference is radical.
past survives, _ . . , ~ .
is essentially My actual sensations occupy definite por-
detached * , , rj ,
from me. tions of the surface of my body ; pure
memory, on the other hand, interests no part of
my body. No doubt, it will beget sensations as it
materializes ; but at that very moment it will cease
to be a memory and pass into the state of a present
thing, something actually lived ; and I shall only
restore to it its character of memory by carrying
myself back to the process by which I called it up,
as it was virtual, from the depths of my past.
It is just because I made it active that it has
become actual, that is to say, a sensation capable
of provoking movements. But most psychologists
see in pure memory only a weakened perception,
an assembly of nascent sensations. Having thus
effaced, to begin with, all difference in kind be
tween sensation and memory, they are led by the
logic of their hypothesis to materialize memory
and to idealize sensation. They perceive memory
only in the form of an image ; that is to say, already
embodied in nascent sensations. Having thus
attributed to it that which is essential to sensa-
ISO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
tion, and refusing to see in the ideality of memory
something distinct, something contrasted with
sensation itself, they are forced, when they come
back to pure sensation, to leave to it that ideality
with which they have thus implicitly endowed nas
cent sensations. For if the past, which by hypo
thesis is no longer active, can subsist in the form of
a weak sensation, there must be sensations that
are powerless. If pure memory, which by hypo
thesis interests no definite part of the body, is a
nascent sensation, then sensation is not essentially
localized in any point of the body. Hence the
illusion that consists in regarding sensation as an
ethereal and unextended state which acquires
extension and consolidates in the body by mere
accident : an illusion which vitiates profoundly,
as we have seen, the theory of external perception,
and raises a great number of the questions at issue
between the various metaphysics of matter. We
must make up our minds to it : sensation is, in
its essence, extended and localized ; it is a source
of movement ; pure memory, being inextensive
and powerless, does not in any degree share the
nature of sensation.
That which I call my present is my attitude
with regard to the immediate future ; it is my
impending action. My present is, then,
when actua- sensori-motor. Of my past, that alone
lized in an . ,
image, becomes image and consequently sensa-
borrows some- . i i_ n
thing from tion, at least nascent, which can colla
borate in that action, insert itself in
CHAP, in THE UNCONSCIOUS l8l
that attitude, in a word make itself useful ; but,
from the moment that it becomes image, the
past leaves the state of pure memory and coin
cides with a certain part of my present. Memory
actualized in an image differs, then, profoundly
from pure memory. The image is a present state,
and its sole share in the past is the memory whence
it arose. Memory, on the contrary, powerless as
long as it remains without utility, is pure from
all admixture of sensation, is without attachment
to the present, and is consequently unextended.
This radical powerlessness of pure memory is
just what will enable us to understand how it is
preserved in a latent state. Without
Consciousness x .
is the note of as vet going to the heart of the matter,
the present; J & &
therefore pure we will confine ourselves to the remark
memory is
latent and that our unwillingness to conceive un-
unconscious. . 7 T i i
conscious psychical states is due, above
all, to the fact that we hold consciousness to
be the essential property of psychical states :
so that a psychical state cannot, it seems, cease
to be conscious without ceasing to exist. But
if consciousness is but the characteristic note of
the present, that is to say of the actually lived,
in short of the active, then that which does not
act may cease to belong to consciousness without
therefore ceasing to exist in some manner. In
other words, in the psychological domain, con
sciousness may not be the synonym of existence,
but only of real action or of immediate efficacy ;
and, limiting thus the meaning of the term, we
l82 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
shall have less difficulty in representing to our
selves a psychical state which is unconscious, that
is to say, ineffective. Whatever idea we may frame
of consciousness in itself, such as it would be if it
could work untrammelled, we cannot deny that,
in a being which has bodily functions, the chief
office of consciousness is to preside over action
and to enlighten choice. Therefore it throws
light on the immediate antecedents of the decision,
and on those past recollections which can usefully
combine with it ; all else remains in shadow.
But we find here once more, in a new form, the
ever-recurrent illusion which, throughout this work,
we have endeavoured to dispel. It is supposed
that consciousness, even when linked with bodily
functions, is a faculty that is only accidentally
practical, and is directed essentially towards
speculation. Then, since we cannot see what
interest, devoted as it is supposed to be to pure
knowledge, it would have in allowing any infor
mation that it possesses to escape, we fail to under
stand why it refuses to throw light on something
that was not entirely lost to it. Whence we con
clude that it can possess nothing more de jure
than what it holds de facto, and that, in the
domain of consciousness, all that is real is actual.
But restore to consciousness its true role : there
will no longer be any more reason to say that
the past effaces itself as soon as perceived, than
there is to suppose that material objects cease to
exist when we cease to perceive them.
CHAP, in THE UNCONSCIOUS 183
We must insist on this last point, for here we
have the central difficulty, and the source of the
ambiguities which surround the problem
Of uncon- P , T>I J f
scions mental of the unconscious. The idea of an un-
statesingen- . . . -, -. ,
erai. Artifl- conscious representation is clear, despite
cial difficulty -,
raised round current prejudice; we may even say
the uncon that we make constant use of it, and
that there is no conception more familiar
to common sense. For every one admits that the
images actually present to our perception are not
the whole of matter. But, on the other hand,
what can be a non-perceived material object, an
image not imagined, unless it is a kind of uncon
scious mental state ? Beyond the walls of your
room, which you perceive at this moment, there
are the adjoining rooms, then the rest of the
house, finally the street and the town in which
you live. It signifies little to which theory of
matter you adhere ; realist or idealist, you are
evidently thinking, when you speak of the town,
of the street, of the other rooms in the house, of
so many perceptions absent from your conscious
ness and yet given outside of it. They are not
created as your consciousness receives them ; they
existed, then, in some sort ; and since, by hypothe
sis, your consciousness did not apprehend them,
how could they exist in themselves unless in the
unconscious state ? How comes it then that an
existence outside of consciousness appears clear to
us in the case of objects, but obscure when we
are speaking of the subject ? Our perceptions,
184 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
actual and virtual, extend along two lines, the
one horizontal, AB, which contains all simultane
ous objects in space, the other vertical, CI, on
which are ranged our successive recollections
set out in time. The point I, at the intersection
of the two lines, is
the only one actually
given to consciousness.
Whence comes it that
we do not hesitate to
FJG 3> posit the reality of the
whole line AB, although
it remains unperceived, while, on the contrary,
of the line CI, the present I which is actually
perceived is the only point which appears to
us really to exist ? There are, at the bottom of
this radical distinction between the two series,
temporal and spatial, so many confused or half-
formed ideas, so many hypotheses devoid of any
speculative value, that we cannot all at once make
an exhaustive analysis of them. In order to
unmask the illusion entirely, we should have to
seek at its origin, and follow through all its wind
ings, the double movement by which we come to
assume objective realities without relation to
consciousness, and states of consciousness without
objective reality, space thus appearing to pre
serve indefinitely the things which are there
juxtaposed, while time in its advance devours the
states which succeed each other within it. Part
of this work has been done in our first chapter,
CHAP, in THE UNCONSCIOUS 185
where we discussed objectivity in general ; another
part will be dealt with in the last pages of this
book, where we shall speak of the idea of matter.
We confine ourselves here to a few essential points.
First, the objects ranged along the line AB
represent to our eyes what we are going to per
ceive, while the line CI contains only that which
has already been perceived. Now the past has
no longer any interest for us ; it has exhausted
its possible action, or will only recover an influence
by borrowing the vitality of the present percep
tion. The immediate future, on the contrary,
consists in an impending action, in an energy
not yet spent. The unperceived part of the ma
terial universe, big with promises and threats,
has then for us a reality which the actually un
perceived periods of our past existence cannot
and should not possess. But this distinction,
which is entirely relative to practical utility and
to the material needs of life, takes in our minds
the more and more marked form of a metaphysical
distinction.
We have shown that the objects which sur
round us represent, in varying degrees, an action
why the idea which we can accomplish upon things,
of an existence i -i
that is real or which we must experience from them,
perceived ap- The date of fulfilment of this possible
pears to be . .... , . ..
clear in the action is indicated by the greater or
case of an on- . , , ,. ,
perceived less remoteness of the corresponding ob-
object, obscure . .. .
in the case of ject, so that distance in space mea-
an unper- . . , ,
idea, sures the proximity of a threat or of
l86 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
a promise in time. Thus space furnishes us at
once with the diagram of our near future, and, as
this future must recede indefinitely, space which
symbolizes it has for its property to remain, in its
immobility, indefinitely open. Hence the imme
diate horizon given to our perception appears to
us to be necessarily surrounded by a wider circle,
existing though unperceived, this circle itself
implying yet another outside it and so on, ad
infinitum. It is, then, of the essence of our actual
perception, inasmuch as it is extended, to be
always only a content in relation to a vaster, even
an unlimited, experience which contains it ; and
this experience, absent from our consciousness,
since it spreads beyond the perceived horizon,
nevertheless appears to be actually given. But
while we feel ourselves to be dependent upon these
material objects which we thus erect into present
realities, our memories, on the contrary, inas
much as they are past, are so much dead weight
that we carry with us, and by which we prefer
to imagine ourselves unencumbered. The same
instinct, in virtue of which we open out space
indefinitely before us, prompts us to shut off
time behind us as it flows. And while reality,
in so far as it is extended, appears to us to over
pass infinitely the bounds of our perception, in
our inner life that alone seems to us to be real
which begins with the present moment ; the rest
is practically abolished. Then, when a memory
reappears in consciousness, it produces on us the
CHAP, in THE UNCONSCIOUS 187
effect of a ghost whose mysterious apparition
must be explained by special causes. In truth,
the adherence of this memory to our present
condition is exactly comparable to the adherence
of unperceived objects to those objects which we
perceive ; and the unconscious plays in each case
a similar part.
But we have great difficulty in representing
the matter to ourselves in this way, because we
have fallen into the habit of emphasizing the
differences and, on the contrary, of slurring over
the resemblances, between the series of objects
simultaneously set out in space and that of
states successively developed in time. In the first,
the terms condition each other in a manner
which is entirely determined, so that the appear
ance of each new term may be foreseen. Thus
I know, when I leave my room, what other
rooms I shall go through. On the contrary, my
memories present themselves in an order which
is apparently capricious. The order of the repre
sentations is then necessary in the one case,
contingent in the other ; and it is this necessity
which I hypostatize, as it were, when I speak
of the existence of objects outside of all conscious
ness. If I see no inconvenience in supposing
given the totality of objects which I do not per
ceive, it is because the strictly determined order
of these objects lends to them the appearance of a
chain, of which my present perception is only
one link. This link communicates its actuality
l88 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP - "
to the rest of the chain. But, if we look at the
matter nearly, we shall see that our memories
form a chain of the same kind, and that our char
acter, always present in all our decisions, is indeed
the actual synthesis of all our past states. In
this epitomized form our previous psychical life
exists for us even more than the external world,
of which we never perceive more than a very small
part, whereas on the contrary we use the whole
of our lived experience. It is true that we possess
merely a digest of it, and that our former percep
tions, considered as distinct individualities, seem
to us to have completely disappeared, or to
appear again only at the bidding of their caprice.
But this semblance of complete destruction or of
capricious revival is due merely to the fact that
actual consciousness accepts at each moment the
useful, and rejects in the same breath the super
fluous. Ever bent upon action, it can only ma
terialize those of our former perceptions which
can ally themselves with the present perception to
take a share in the final decision. If it is neces
sary, when I would manifest my will at a given
point of space, that my consciousness should go
successively through those intermediaries or those
obstacles of which the sum constitutes what we call
distance in space, so on the other hand it is useful,
in order to throw light on this action, that my con
sciousness should jump the interval of time which
separates the actual situation from a former one
which resembles it ; and as consciousness goes
CHAP, iii EXISTENCE 189
back to the earlier date at a bound, all the inter
mediate past escapes its hold. The same reasons,
then, which bring about that our perceptions range
themselves in strict continuity in space, cause our
memories to be illumined discontinuously in time.
We have not, in regard to objects unperceived in
space and unconscious memories in time, to do
with two radically different forms of existence ;
but the exigencies of action are the inverse in the
one case of what they are in the other.
But here we come to the capital problem of
existence, a problem we can only glance at, for
Existence im- otherwise it would lead us step by step
m t *h e near t of metaphysics. We will
merely say that with regard to matters
^ experience which alone concern us
nere existence appears to imply two
either. conditions taken together : (i) presenta
tion in consciousness ; and (2) the logical or
causal connexion of that which is so presented
with what precedes and with what follows. The
reality for us of a psychical state or of a
material object consists in the double fact that
our consciousness perceives them and that they
form part of a series, temporal or spatial, of which
the elements determine each other. But these
two conditions admit of degrees, and it is conceiv
able that, though both are necessary, they may be
unequally fulfilled. Thus, in the case of actual
internal states, the connexion is less close, and
the determination of the present by the past, leav-
IQO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ni
ing ample room for contingency, has not the
character of a mathematical derivation ; but
then, presentation in consciousness is perfect,
an actual psychical state yielding the whole
of its content in the act itself whereby we
perceive it. On the contrary, if we are dealing
with external objects it is the connexion which is
perfect, since these objects obey necessary laws ;
but then the other condition, presentation in con
sciousness, is never more than partially fulfilled,
for the material object, just because of the multi
tude of unperceived elements by which it is linked
with all other objects, appears to enfold within
itself and to hide behind it infinitely more than
it allows to be seen. We ought to say, then, that
existence, in the empirical sense of the word,
always implies conscious apprehension and regular
connexion ; both at the same time but in different
degrees. But our intellect, of which the function
is to establish clear-cut distinctions, does not so
understand things. Rather than admit the
presence in all cases of the two elements mingled
The fallacy in varvin g proportions, it prefers to
dis- dissociate them, and thus attribute
tingvushmg
two kinds of to external objects on the one hand, and
existence
characterized to internal states on the other, two radi-
the one by
conscious :ally different modes of existence, each
apprehension,
and the other characterized by the exclusive presence of
by regular
connexion. the condition which should be regarded
as merely preponderating. Then the existence of
psychical states is assumed to consist entirely in
CHAP in. RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQI
their apprehension by consciousness, and that of ex
ternal phenomena, entirely also, in the strict order of
their concomitance and their succession. Whence
the impossibility of leaving to material objects,
existing, but unperceived, the smallest share in
consciousness, and to internal unconscious states
the smallest share in existence. We have shown,
at the beginning of this book, the consequences
of the first illusion : it ends by falsifying our
representation of matter. The second, comple
mentary to the first, vitiates our conception of
mind by casting over the idea of the unconscious
an artificial obscurity. The whole of our past
psychical life conditions our present state, with
out being its necessary determinant ; whole,
also, it reveals itself in our character, although
no one of its past states manifests itself explicitly
in character. Taken together, these two con
ditions assure to each one of the past psychological
states a real, though an unconscious, existence.
But we are so much accustomed to reverse,
for the sake of action, the real order of things,
But, if mem- we are so strongly obsessed by images
"s 1 * 6 " drawn from space, that we cannot hin-
^er ourselves from asking where mem-
or ies are stored up. We understand
the Question, ^hat physico-chemical phenomena take
place in the brain, that the brain is in the body,
the body in the air which surrounds it, etc. ;
but the past, once achieved, if it is retained,
where is it ? To locate it in the cerebral sub-
a
IQ2 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
stance, in the state of molecular modification,
seems clear and simple enough, because then we
have a receptacle, actually given, which we have
only to open in order to let the latent images
flow into consciousness. But if the brain cannot
serve such a purpose, in what warehouse shall
we store the accumulated images ? We forget
that the relation of container to content borrows
its apparent clearness and universality from the
necessity laid upon us of always opening out space
in front of us, and of always closing duration be
hind us. Because it has been shown that one thing
is within another, the phenomenon of its preserva
tion is not thereby made any clearer. We may
even go further : let us admit for a moment that
the past survives in the form of a memory stored
in the brain ; it is then necessary that the brain,
in order to preserve the memory, should pre
serve itself. But the brain, in so far as it is an
image extended in space, never occupies more
than the present moment : it constitutes, with all
the rest of the material universe, an ever renewed
section of universal becoming. Either, then,
you must suppose that this universe dies and is
born again miraculously at each moment of dura
tion, or you must attribute to it that continuity of
existence which you deny to consciousness, and
make of its past a reality which endures and is. pro
longed into its present. So that you have gained
nothing by depositing the memories in matter,
and you find yourself, on the contrary, compelled
CHAP, in RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT 193
to extend to the totality of the states of the ma
terial world that complete and independent sur
vival of the past which you have just refused to
psychical states. This survival of the past per
se forces itself upon philosophers, then, under one
form or another ; and the difficulty that we have
in conceiving it comes simply from the fact
that we extend to the series of memories, in time,
that obligation of containing and being contained
which appHes only to the collection of bodies
instantaneously perceived in space. The funda
mental illusion consists in transferring to dura
tion itself, in its continuous flow, the form of
the instantaneous sections which we make in it.
But how can the past, which, by hypothesis,
has ceased to be, preserve itself ? Have we not
here a real contradiction ? We reply
The past has ., , . , , , f,
Dot ceased to that the question is just whether the
exist ; it has . ,
only ceased past has ceased to exist or whether it
has simply ceased to be useful. You
define the present in an arbitrary manner as that
which is, whereas the present is simply what is
being made. Nothing is less than the present
moment, if you understand by that the indivisible
limit which divides the past from the future.
When we think this present as going to be, it exists
not yet ; and when we think it as existing, it is
already past. If, on the other hand, what you are
considering is the concrete present such as it is act
ually lived by consciousness, we may say that this
present consists, in large measure, in the immediate
o
194 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ni
past. In the fraction of a second which covers
the briefest possible perception of light, billions
of vibrations have taken place, of which the first
is separated from the last by an interval which is
enormously divided. Your perception, however
instantaneous, consists then in an incalculable
multitude of remembered elements ; and in truth
every perception is already memory. Practically
we perceive only the past, the pure present being
the invisible progress of the past gnawing into
the future.
Consciousness, then, illumines, at each moment
of tune, that immediate part of the past which,
impending over the future, seeks to realize
and to associate with it. Solely preoccupied in
thus determining an undetermined future, con
sciousness may shed a little of its light on those
of our states, more remote in the past, which can
be usefully combined with our present state,
that is to say, with our immediate past : the rest
remains in the dark. It is in this illuminated part
of our history that we remain seated, in virtue of
the fundamental law of life, which is a law of
action : hence the difficulty we experience in con
ceiving memories which are preserved in the
shadow. Our reluctance to admit the integral
survival of the past has its origin, then, in the
very bent of our psychical life, an unfolding of
states wherein our interest prompts us to look at
that which is unrolling, and not at that which is
entirely unrolled.
CHAP, in RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQ5
So we return, after a long digression, to our
point of departure. There are, we have said, two
The two memories which are profoundly dis-
tinct : the one > fixed in the organism,
is nothing else but the complete set of
uppoX d the intelligently constructed mechanisms
other> which ensure the appropriate reply to
the various possible demands. This memory
enables us to adapt ourselves to the present situa
tion ; through it the actions to which we are sub
ject prolong themselves into reactions that are
sometimes accomplished, sometimes merely nas
cent, but always more or less appropriate. Habit
rather than memory, it acts our past experience
but does not call up its image. The other is the
true memory. Co-extensive with consciousness,
it retains and ranges alongside of each other all
our states in the order in which they occur,
leaving to each fact its place and consequently
marking its date, truly moving in the past and
not, like the first, in an ever renewed present. But,
in marking the profound distinction between
these two forms of memory, we have not shown
their connecting link. Above the body, with its
mechanisms which symbolize the accumulated
effort of past actions, the memory which ima
gines and repeats has been left to hang, as it
were, suspended in the void. Now, if it be
true that we never perceive anything but our
immediate past, if our consciousness of the
present is already memory, the two terms
196 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
which had been separated to begin with cohere
closely together. Seen from this new point of
view, indeed, our body is nothing but that part
of our representation which is ever being born
again, the part always present, or rather that
which at each moment is just past. Itself an
image, the body cannot store up images, since
it forms a part of the images; and this is why it
is a chimerical enterprise to seek to localize past
or even present perceptions in the brain : they
are not in it ; it is the brain that is in them. But
this special image which persists in the midst of
the others, and which I call my body, constitutes
at every moment, as we have said, a section of
the universal becoming. It is then the place of
passage of the movements received and thrown
back, a hyphen, a connecting link between the
things which act upon me and the things upon
which I act, the seat, in a word, of the sensori-
motor phenomena. If I represent by a cone SAB
the totality of the recollections accumulated in
my memory, the base AB, situated in the past,
remains motionless, while the summit S, which
indicates at all times my present, moves forward
unceasingly, and unceasingly also touches the
moving plane P of my actual representation
of the universe. At S the image of the body
is concentrated ; and, since it belongs to the
plane P, this image does but receive and restore
actions emanating from all the images of which
the plane is composed.
CHAP, ni RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQ7
The bodily memory, made up of the sum of the
sensori-motor systems organized by habit, is then
a quasi-instantaneous mem
ory to which the true memory
of the past serves as base.
Since they are not two separ
ate things, since the first is
only, as we have said, the
pointed end, ever moving,
inserted by the second in the
shifting plane of experience,it is natural that the two
functions should lend each other a mutual support.
So, on the one hand, the memory of the past offers
to the sensori-motor mechanisms all the recollections
capable of guiding them in their task and of giv
ing to the motor reaction the direction suggested
by the lessons of experience. It is in just this
that the associations of contiguity and likeness
consist. But, on the other hand, the sensori-motor
apparatus furnish to ineffective, that is uncon
scious, memories, the means of taking on a body,
of materializing themselves, in short of becoming
present. For, that a recollection should reappear
in consciousness, it is necessary that it should
descend from the heights of pure memory down
to the precise point where action is taking place.
In other words, it is from the present that comes
the appeal to which memory responds, and it
is from the sensori-motor elements of present
action that a memory borrows the warmth which
gives it life.
198 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
Is it not by the constancy of this agreement,
by the precision with which these two comple
mentary memories insert themselves
oood sense each into the other, that we recognize a
consists main- o
X "* . m * king well-balanced mind, that is to say,
the right use J
of spontan- m fact, a man nicely adapted to life ?
eons memory, J
The characteristic of the man of action
is the promptitude with which he summons
to the help of a given situation all the mem
ories which have reference to it ; but it is also the
insurmountable barrier which encounter, when they
present themselves on the threshold of his con
sciousness, memories that are useless or indiffer
ent. To live only in the present, to respond
to a stimulus by the immediate reaction which
prolongs it, is the mark of the lower animals :
the man who proceeds in this way is a man of im
pulse. But he who lives in the past for the mere
pleasure of living there, and in whom recollections
emerge into the light of consciousness without
any advantage for the present situation, is
hardly better fitted for action : here we have no
man of impulse, but a dreamer. Between these
two extremes lies the happy disposition of a
memory docile enough to follow with precision
all the outlines of the present situation, but ener
getic enough to resist all other appeal. Good
sense, or practical sense, is probably nothing but
this.
The extraordinary development of spontaneous
memory in most children is due to the fact that
CHAP, in RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT 199
they have not yet persuaded their memory to
remain bound up with their conduct. They
usually follow the impression of the moment,
and as with them action does not bow to the
suggestions of memory, so neither are their recol
lections limited to the necessities of action.
They seem to retain with greater facility only
because they remember with less discernment.
The apparent diminution of memory, as intellect
developes, is then due to the growing organi
zation of recollections with acts. Thus con
scious memory loses in range what it gains
in force of penetration : it had at first the
facility of the memory of dreams, but then
it was actually dreaming. Indeed we observe
this same exaggeration of spontaneous mem
ory in men whose intellectual development
hardly goes beyond that of childhood. A mis
sionary, after preaching a long sermon to some
African savages, heard one of them repeat it tex-
tually, with the same gestures, from beginning to
end. 1
But, if almost the whole of our past is hidden
from us because it is inhibited by the necessities
of present action, it will find strength to cross the
threshold of consciousness in all cases where we
renounce the interests of effective action to replace
ourselves, so to speak, in the life of dreams. Sleep,
natural or artificial, brings about an indifference
1 Kay, Memory and How to Improve it. New York, 1888,
p. 18.
2OO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
of just this kind. It has been recently suggested
that in sleep there is an interruption of the con
tact between the nervous elements, motor and
sensory. 1 Even if we do not accept this in
genious hypothesis, it is impossible not to see
in sleep a relaxing, even if only functional, of
the tension of the nervous system, ever ready,
Baring waking hours, to prolong by an appropriate
reaction the stimulation received . Now the exalta
tion of the memory in certain dreams and in cer
tain somnambulistic states is well known. Mem
ories which we believed abolished then reappear
with striking completeness ; we live over again,
in all their detail, forgotten scenes of childhood ;
we speak languages which we no longer even
remember to have learnt. But there is nothing
more instructive in this regard than what hap
pens in cases of sudden suffocation, in men
drowned or hanged. The man, when brought to
life again, states that he saw, in a very short
time, all the forgotten events of his life passing
before him with, great rapidity, with their smallest
circumstances and in the very order in which
they occurred.*
1 Mathias Duval, Theorie histologique du sommeil (C. R. de
la Soc. de Biologie, 1895, p. 74). Cf. Lepine, ibid., p. 85 and
Revue de Medecine, Aug. 1894, and especially Pupin, Le
neurone et les hypotheses histologiques, Paris, 1896.
2 Forbes Winslow, Obscure Diseases of the Brain, p. 25
e t S eq. Ribot, Maladies de la memoir e, p. 139 et seq. Mauro,
Le sommeil et les reves, Paris, 1878, p. 439. Egger, Lc moi
des mouiants (Revue philosophique , Jan. and Oct. 1896).
CHAP, m MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS 2OI
A human being who should dream his life in
stead of living it would no doubt thus keep before
spontaneous his eyes at each moment the infinite mul-
differ- titude of the details of his past history.
8 And, on the other hand, the man who
should repudiate this memory with all
place arises that it begets would be continually
idea. acting his life instead of truly repre
senting it to himself: a conscious automaton,
he would follow the lead of useful habits which
prolong into an appropriate reaction the stimula
tion received. The first would never rise above
the particular, or even above the individual ;
leaving to each image its date in time and its
position in space, he would see wherein it differs
from others and not how it resembles them. The
other, always swayed by habit, would only dis
tinguish in any situation that aspect in which it
practically resembles former situations ; incapable,
doubtless, of thinking universals, since every
general idea implies the representation, at least
virtual, of a number of remembered images, he
would nevertheless move in the universal, habit
being to action what generality is to thought.
But these two extreme states, the one of an
entirely contemplative memory which appre
hends only the singular in its vision, the other
of a purely motor memory which stamps the note
Cf. Ball s dictum : Memory is a faculty which loses nothing
and records everything. (Quoted by Rouillard, Les amnesics
[medical thesis], Paris, 1885, p. 25.)
2O2 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
of generality on its action, are really apart and
are fully visible only in exceptional cases. In
normal life they are interpenetrating, so that
each has to abandon some part of its original
purity. The first reveals itself in the recollection
of differences, the second in the perception of
resemblances : at the meeting of the two currents
appears the general idea.
We are not here concerned to settle once for all
the whole question of general ideas. Some there
are that have not originated in perception alone,
and that have but a very distant connexion
with material objects. We will leave these
on one side, and consider only those general
ideas that are founded on what we have
called the perception of similarity. We will try
to follow pure memory, integral memory, in the
continuous effort which it makes to insert itself
into motor habit. In this way we may throw
more light upon the office and nature of this
memory, and perhaps make clearer, at the same
time, by regarding them in this particular aspect,
the two equally obscure notions of resemblance
and of generality.
If we consider as closely as possible the diffi
culties of a psychological order which surround
the problem of general ideas, we shall
Nominalism IT , . , -
and concep- come, we believe, to enclose them in
revolve in a this circle : to generalize, it is first of
leading back all necessary to abstract, but to abstract
to the other. . , .
to any purpose we must already know
CHAP, m MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS 2O3
how to generalize. Round this circle gravitate,
consciously or unconsciously, nominalism and
conceptualism, each doctrine having in its fav
our mainly the insufficiency of the other. The
nominalists, retaining of the general idea only its
extension, see in it merely an open and unlimited
series of individual objects. The unity of the
idea can then, for them, consist only in the identity
of the symbol by which we designate indiffer
ently all these distinct objects. According to
them, we begin by perceiving a thing, and then
we assign to it a word : this word, backed by
the faculty or the habit of extending itself to an
unlimited number of other things, then sets up for
a general idea. But, in order that the word
should extend and yet limit itself to the objects
which it designates, it is necessary that these
objects should offer us resemblances which,
when we compare them, shall distinguish them
from all the objects to which the word does not
apply. Generalization does not, consequently,
occur without our taking into account qualities
that have been found to be common and there
fore considered in the abstract ; and from step to
step, nominalism is thus led to define the general
idea by its intension and not merely by its exten
sion, as it set out to do. It is just from this in
tension that conceptualism starts ; the intellect, on
this theory, resolves the superficial unity of the
individual into different qualities, each of which,
isolated from the individual which limited it, be-
204 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. m.
comes by that very isolation representative of a
genus. Instead of regarding each genus as includ
ing actually a multiplicity of objects, it is now main
tained, on the contrary, that each object involves
potentially, and as so many qualities which it holds
captive, a multiplicity of genera. But the ques
tion before us is whether individual qualities,
even isolated by an effort of abstraction, do not
remain individual ; and whether, to make them
into genera, a new effort of the mind is not re
quired, by which it first bestows on each quality
a name, and then collects under this name a
multitude of individual objects. The whiteness
of a lily is not the whiteness of a snow-field ; they
remain, even as isolated from the snow and the
Uly, snow-white or lily-white. They only forego
their individuality if we consider their likeness in
order to give them a common name ; then, apply
ing this name to an unlimited number of similar
objects, we throw back upon the quality, by a
sort of ricochet, the generality which the word
went out to seek in its application to things.
But, reasoning in this way, do we not return to
the point of view of extension, which we just now
abandoned ? We are then, in truth, revolving
in a circle, nominalism leading us to conceptualism,
and conceptualism bringing us back to nominalism.
Generalization can only be effected by extracting
common qualities ; but, that qualities should
appear common, they must have already been
subjected to a process of generalization.
CHAP ni. MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS 2O5
Now, when we get to the bottom of these two
opposite theories, we find in them a common
postulate ; each will have it that we start from
the perception of individual objects. The first
composes the genus by an enumeration ; the
second disengages it by an analysis ; but it is
upon individuals, considered as so many realities
given to immediate intuition, that both analysis
and enumeration are supposed to bear. This is
the postulate. In spite of its apparent obvious
ness, we must expect to find, and we do indeed
find, that experience belies it.
A priori, indeed, we may expect the clear dis
tinction of individual objects to be a luxury of
perception, just as the clear repre-
The clear f . J ... .
perception oi sentation of general ideas is a refinement
objects and of the intellect. The full conception
the clear .. , , ,
conception oi of genera is no doubt proper to human
te thought ; it demands an effort of reflex-
development. -, , . , r
ion, by which we expunge from a repre
sentation the details of time and place. But the re
flexion on these details a reflexion without which
the individuality of objects would escape us pre
supposes a faculty of noticing differences, and
therefore a memory of images, which is certainly
the privilege of man and of the higher animals.
It would seem, then, that we start neither
from the perception of the individual nor from
the conception of the genus, but from an inter
mediate knowledge, from a confused sense of the
striking quality or of resemblance : this sense,
206 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
equally remote from generality fully conceived
and from individuality clearly perceived, begets
them both by a process of dissociation. Reflective
analysis clarifies it into the general idea ; dis
criminative memory solidifies it into a perception
of the individual.
But this will be more clearly evident if we go
back to the purely utilitarian origin of our per
ception of things. That which interests us in a
given situation, that which we are likely to grasp
in it first, is the side by which it can respond to
a tendency or a need. But a need goes straight
to the resemblance or quality ; it cares little for
individual differences. To this discernment of the
useful we may surmise that the perception of
animals is, in most cases, confined. It is grass
in general which attracts the herbivorous animal :
the colour and the smell of grass, felt and ex
perienced as forces, (we do not go so far as to
say, thought as qualities or genera) are the sole
immediate data of its external perception. On this
For the background of generality or of resem-
l ance the animal s memory may show
U P con trasts from which will issue dif-
ferentiations ; it will then distinguish
one countryside from another, one field
from another field ; but this is, we repeat, the super
fluity of perception, not a necessary part. It may
be urged that we are only throwing the problem
further back, that we are merely relegating to
the unconscious the process by which similarity
CHAP, in MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS 2O7
is discovered and genera are constituted. But
we relegate nothing to the unconscious, for the
very simple reason that it is not, in our opinion,
an effort of a psychological nature which here dis
engages similarity ; this similarity acts objectively
like a force, and provokes reactions that are iden
tical in virtue of the purely physical law which re
quires that the same general effects should follow the
same profound causes. Hydrochloric acid always
acts in the same way upon carbonate of lime
whether in the form of marble or of chalk yet
we do not say that the acid perceives in the various
species the characteristic features of the genus.
Now there is no essential difference between the
process by which this acid picks out from the
salt its base, and the act of the plant which
invariably extracts from the most diverse soils
those elements that serve to nourish it. Make
one more step ; imagine a rudimentary con
sciousness such as that of an amoeba in a drop
of water : it will be sensible of the resemblance,
and not of the difference, in the various organic
substances which it can assimilate. In short,
we can follow from the mineral to the plant,
from the plant to the simplest conscious beings,
from the animal to man, the progress of the
operation by which things and beings seize from
out their surroundings that which attracts them,
that which interests them practically, without
needing any effort of abstraction, simply because
the rest of their surroundings takes no hold upon
208 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
them : this similarity of reaction following actions
superficially different is the germ which the human
consciousness developes into general ideas.
Consider, indeed, the purpose and function
of our nervous system as far as we can infer
them from its structure. We see a great
so that the variety of mechanisms of perception,
K5)eli- dea a ^ D0un d, through the intermediary
iTis ed e b P ?e- re of the centres, to the same motor
sented. apparatus. Sensation is unstable ; it
can take the most varied shades ; the motor
mechanism, on the contrary, once set going, will
invariably work in the same way. We may then
suppose perceptions as different as possible in
their superficial details : if only they are continued
by the same motor reactions, if the organism can
extract from them the same useful effects, if they
impress upon the body the same attitude, some
thing common will issue from them, and the general
idea will have been felt and passively experienced,
before being represented. Here then we escape
at last from the circle in which we at first appeared
to be confined. In order to generalize, we said,
we have to abstract similarity, but in order to
disengage similarity usefully we must already
know how to generalize. There really is no circle,
because the similarity, from which the mind starts
when it first begins the work of abstraction, is
not the similarity at which the mind arrives when
it consciously generalizes. That from which it
starts is a similarity felt and lived ; or, if you prefer
CHAP. in. MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS
the expression, a similarity which is automatically
acted. That to which it returns is a similarity in
telligently perceived, or thought. And it is precisely
in the course of this progress that are built up,
by the double effort of the understanding and of
the memory, the perception of individuals and
the conception of genera, memory grafting dis
tinctions upon resemblances which have been
spontaneously abstracted, the understanding dis
engaging from the habit of resemblances the clear
idea of generality. This idea of generality was,
in the beginning, only our consciousness of a likeness
of attitude in a diversity of situations ; it was
habit itself, mounting from the sphere of move
ment to that of thought. But from genera so
sketched out mechanically by habit we have
passed, by an effort of reflexion upon this very
process, to the general idea of genus ; and when
that idea has been once constituted, we have con
structed (this time voluntarily) an unlimited num
ber of general notions. It is not necessary here to
follow the intellect into the detail of this con
struction. It is enough to say that the under
standing, imitating the effort of nature, has also
set up motor apparatuses, artificial in this case, to
make a limited number of them answer to an un
limited number of individual objects : the assem
blage of these mechanisms is articulate speech.
Yet these two divergent operations of the mind,
the one by which it discerns individuals, the other
by which it constructs genera, are far from demand-
2IO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
ing the same effort or progressing with the same
rapidity. The first, requiring only the inter
vention of memory, takes place from the outset
of our experience ; the second goes on indefinitely
without ever reaching its goal. The first issues in
the formation of stable images, which in their turn
are stored up in memory ; the second comes out in
representations that are unstable and evanescent.
We must dwell on this last point, for we touch
here an essential problem of mental life.
The essence of the general idea, in fact, is to
be unceasingly going backwards and forwards
between the plane of action and that of pure
memory. Let us refer once more to the dia
gram we traced above. At S is the present
perception which I have of my body, that is
to say, of a certain sensori-motor equilibrium.
Over the surface of the base AB are spread,
we may say, my recollections in their totality.
Within the cone so determined the general
idea oscillates continually between the summit
S and the base AB. In S it would take the
clearly defined form of a bodily attitude or of
an uttered word ; at AB it would wear the aspect,
no less defined, of the thousand individual images
into which its fragile unity would break
up. And that is why a psychology which
movement" 1 abides by the already done, which- con-
pfane e< of siders only that which is made and
tire ignores that which is in the making,
will never perceive in this movement
CHAP. Ill
MEMORY AND GENERAL IDEAS
211
anything more than the two extremities between
which it oscillates ; it makes the general idea
coincide sometimes with the action which mani
fests it or the word which expresses it, and
at other times with the multitudinous images,
unlimited in number, which are its equivalent in
memory. But the truth is that the general idea
escapes us as soon as we try to fix it at either of
the two extremities. It consists in the double
current which goes from the one to the other,
always ready either to crystallize into uttered
words or to evaporate into memories.
This amounts to saying that between the
sensori-motor mechanisms figured by the point
S and the totality of the memories disposed in
AB there is room, as we indicated in the preceding
chapter, for a thou
sand repetitions of our
psychical life, figured
by as many sections
A B , A"B", etc., of the
same cone. We tend
to scatter ourselves
over AB in the measure
that we detach our
selves from our sensory
and motor state to live
in the life of dreams :
FIG. 5.
we tend to concentrate
ourselves in S in the measure that we attach
ourselves more firmly to the present reality,
212 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
responding by motor reactions to sensory stimula
tion. In point of fact, the normal self never stays
in either of these extreme positions ; it moves
between them, adopts in turn the positions corre
sponding to the intermediate sections, or, in other
words, gives to its representations just enough
image and just enough idea for them to be able
to lend useful aid to the present action.
From this conception of the lower mental life
the laws of the association of ideas can be deduced.
But, before we deal with this point, we must first
show the insufficiency of the current theories of
association.
That every idea which arises in the mind has
a relation of similarity or of contiguity with
But associa- tne previous mental state, we do not
ie dispute ; but a statement of the kind
throws no light on the mechanism of as-
and e oJr ea " sociation ; nor, indeed, does it really tell
actual needs. us any thing at all. For we should seek
in vain for two ideas which have not some point
of resemblance, or which do not touch each other
somewhere. To take similarity first : however
profound are the differences which separate two
images, we shall always find, if we go back high
enough, a common genus to which they belong, and
consequently a resemblance which may serve as a
connecting link between them. And, in regard to
contiguity, a perception A, as we said before, will
not evoke by contiguity a former image B, unless
CHAP, ni THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 213
it recalls to us first an image A which is like it,
because it is the recollection A , and not the
perception A, which really touches B in memory.
However distant, then, we suppose the terms A
and B from each other, a relation of contiguity
can always be found between them, provided that
the intercalated term A bears a sufficiently far
fetched resemblance to A. This is as much as to
say that between any two ideas chosen at random
there is always a resemblance, and always, even,
contiguity ; so that, when we discover a relation
of contiguity or of resemblance between two suc
cessive ideas, we have in no way explained why
the one evokes the other.
What we really need to discover is how a choice
is effected among an infinite number of recollec
tions which all resemble in some way the present
perception, and why only one of them, this rather
than that, emerges into the light of consciousness.
But this is just what associationism cannot tell
us, because it has made ideas and images into
independent entities floating, like the atoms of
Epicurus, in an inward space, drawing near to
each other and catching hold of each other when
chance brings them within the sphere of mutual
attraction. And if we try to get to the bottom
of the doctrine on this point, we find that its
error is that it intellectualizes ideas over much:
it attributes to them a purely speculative role,
believes that they exist for themselves and not
for us, and overlooks the relation which they
214 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
bear to the activity of the will. If memories
move about, indifferent, in a consciousness that is
both lifeless and shapeless, there is no reason why
the present perception should prefer and attract
any one of them : we can only, in that case,
note the conjunction when once it has taken
place and speak of similarity or of contiguity,
which is merely, at bottom, to express in vague
terms that our mental states have affinities for
one another.
But even of this affinity, which takes the double
form of contiguity and of similarity, associationism
can furnish no explanation. The general ten
dency to associate remains as obscure for us, if we
adhere to this doctrine, as the particular forms of
association. Having stiffened individual memory-
images into ready-made things, given cut and
dry in the course of our mental life, associa
tionism is reduced to bringing in, between these
objects, mysterious attractions of which it is not
even possible to say beforehand, as of physical
attraction, by what effects they will manifest
themselves. For why should an image which is,
by hypothesis, self-sufficient, seek to accrue to
itself others either similar or given in contiguity
with it ? The truth is that this independent
image is a late and artificial product of the mind-
In fact, we perceive the resemblance before we per
ceive the individuals which resemble each other ;
and, in an aggregate of contiguous parts, we per
ceive the whole before the parts. We go on from
CHAP, m THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 215
similarity to similar objects, embroidering upon
the similarity, as on their common stuff or canvas,
the variety of individual differences. And we
go on also from the whole to the parts, by a process
of decomposition the law of which will appear
later, a process which consists in breaking up,
for the greater convenience of practical life,
the continuity of the real. Association, then,
is not the primary fact : dissociation is what
we begin with, and the tendency of every mem
ory to gather to itself others must be explained
by the natural return of the mind to the undivided
unity of perception.
But here we discover the radical vice of associa-
tionism. Given a present perception which forms
similarity kv turns, with different recollections,
severa -l associations one after another,
- there are two ways, as we said, of con-
th s e s mse e iv" e ce i ym g the mechanism of this associa-
accounted for. tion. We may suppose that the percep
tion remains identical with itself, a true psychical
atom which gathers to itself others just as these
happen to be passing by. This is the point of
view of associationism. But there is also another,
precisely the one which we have indicated in
our theory of recognition. We have supposed
that our entire personality, with the totality of
our recollections, is present, undivided within our
actual perception. Then, if this perception evokes
in turn different memories, it is not by a mechan
ical adjunction of more and more numerous
2l6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
elements which, while it remains itself unmoved,
it attracts around it, but rather by an expansion
of the entire consciousness which, spreading out
over a larger area, discovers the fuller detail of
its wealth. So a nebulous mass, seen through
more and more powerful telescopes, resolves itself
into an ever greater number of stars. On the
first hypothesis (in favour of which there is little
but its apparent simplicity and its analogy
with a misunderstood physical atomism), each
recollection is a fixed and independent being,
of which we can neither say why it seeks to
accrue to itself others, nor how it chooses, among
a thousand memories which should have equal
rights, those with which to associate itself in
virtue of similarity or contiguity. We must
suppose that ideas jostle each other at random,
or that they exert among themselves mysterious
forces, and moreover we have against us the
witness of consciousness, which never shows us
psychical facts floating as independent entities.
From the second point of view, we merely state a
fact, viz. that psychic facts are bound up with
each other, and are always given together to
immediate consciousness as an undivided whole
which reflexion alone cuts up into distinct frag
ments. What we have to explain, then, is no
longer the cohesion of internal states, but the
double movement of contraction and expansion
by which consciousness narrows or enlarges
the development of its content. But this move-
CHAP, in THE PLANES OF DREAM AND ACTION 217
ment, we shall see, is the result of the fun
damental needs of life ; and we shall also
see why the associations/ which we appear
to form in the course of this movement, corre
spond to all the possible degrees of so-called con
tiguity and resemblance.
Let us, for a moment, suppose our psychical
life reduced to sensori-motor functions alone.
They should ^ n other words, suppose ourselves placed
first ,<mtr df m the diagrammatic figure on page 211
?c?on. wher at the P om t S, which corresponds to the
they coincide ; g rea t e st possible simplification of our
mental life. In this state every perception
spontaneously prolongs itself into appropriate
reactions; for analogous former perceptions
have set up more or less complex motor
apparatus, which only await a recurrence of
the same appeal in order to enter into play.
Now there is, in this mechanism, an associa
tion of similarity, since the present perception
acts in virtue of its likeness to past perceptions ;
and there is also an association of contiguity,
since the movements which followed those
former perceptions reproduce themselves, and
may even bring in their train a vast num
ber of actions co-ordinate with the first. Here
then we seize association of similarity and
association of contiguity at their Very source,
and at a point where they are almost confounded
in one not indeed thought, but acted and lived.
They are not contingent forms of our psychical
2l8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. HI
life ; they represent the two complementary
aspects of one and the same fundamental tendency,
the tendency of every organism to extract from
a given situation that in it which is useful, and to
store up the eventual reaction in the form of a
motor habit, that it may serve other situations
of the same kind.
Let us jump now to the other extremity of
our mental life, and, following our line of thought,
go from the psychical existence which
o?tt?3!S? f is merety acted, to that which is ex-
clusively dreamed. In other words,
^ us pl ace ourselves on the base
AB of memory (page 211) where all the
events of our past life are set out in their small
est details. A consciousness which, detached from
action, should thus keep in view the totality of
its past, would have no reason to dwell upon one
part of this past rather than upon another. In
one sense, all its recollections would differ from
its present perception, for, if we take them with
the multiplicity of their detail, no two memories
are ever precisely the same thing. But, in another
sense, any memory may be set alongside the pre
sent situation : it would be sufficient to neglect in
this perception and in this memory just enough
detail for similarity alone to appear. Moreover,
the moment that the recollection is linked with
the perception, a multitude of events contig
uous to the memory are thereby fastened to the
perception an indefinite multitude, which is only
CHAP, in THE PLANES OF DREAM AND ACTION 2IQ
limited at the point at which we choose to stop
it. The necessities of life are no longer there
to regulate the effect of similarity, and conse
quently of contiguity ; and as, after all, everything
resembles everything else, it follows that any
thing can be associated with anything. In the
first case the present perception continued itself
in determinate movements ; now it melts into
an infinity of memories, all equally possible.
At AB association would provoke an arbitrary
choice, and in S an inevitable deed.
But these are only two extreme limits, at
which the psychologist must place himself alter
nately for convenience of study, and
Now normal . . . ,. - ., .
psychical which are really never reached in prac-
life oscillates . _, . % . .
between these tice. There is not, in man at least, a
two extremes, .
according to purely senson-motor state, any more
the degree of Jt , .... . ..
tension in than there is in mm an imaginative
life without some slight activity be
neath it. Our psychical life, as we have said,
oscillates normally between these two extremes.
On the one hand, the sensori-motor state S marks
out the present direction of memory, being no
thing else, in fact, than its actual and acting
extremity ; and on the other hand this memory
itself, with the totality of our past, is continually
pressing forward, so as to insert the largest
possible part of itself into the present action.
From this double effort result, at every mo
ment, an infinite number of possible states
of memory, states figured by the sections
22O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
A B , A B" of our diagram. These are, as we
have said, so many repetitions of the whole
of our past life. But each section is larger or
smaller according to its nearness to the base or
to the summit ; and moreover each of these
complete representations of the past brings to
the light of consciousness only that which can
fit into the sensori-motor state, and consequently
that which resembles the present perception
from the point of view of the action to be accom
plished. In other words, memory, laden with
the whole of the past, responds to the appeal
of the present state by two simultaneous move
ments, one of translation, by which it moves
in its entirety to meet experience, thus contracting
more or less, though without dividing, with a
view to action ; the other of rotation upon itself,
by which it turns towards the situation of the
moment, presenting to it that side of itself which
may prove to be the most useful. To these
varying degrees of contraction correspond the
various forms of association by similarity.
Everything happens, then, as though our
recollections were repeated an infinite number
Associations of times in these many possible reduc-
of similarity . , ... _, ,
are more tions of our past life. They take a
memory is more common form when memory
near the plane , . , , . ,
of action, more shrinks most, more personal when it
ft 6 withdraws widens out, and they thus enter into
plane of dream, an unlimited number of different sys-
tematizations. A word from a foreign language,
CHAP, in DIFFERENT PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 221
uttered in my hearing, may make me think of
that language in general or of a voice which once
pronounced it in a certain way. These two
associations by similarity are not due to the
accidental arrival of two different representations,
which chance brought by turns within the attract
ing influence of the actual perception. They
answer to two different mental dispositions, to
two distinct degrees of tension of the memory;
in the latter case nearer to the pure image, in
the former more disposed towards immediate
response, that is to say, to action. To classify
these systems, to discover the law which binds
them respectively to the different tones of
our mental life, to show how each of these tones
is itself determined by the needs of the moment
and also by the varying degree of our personal
effort, would be a difficult task : the whole of
this psychology is yet to do, and for the moment
we do not even wish to attempt it. But every
one is clearly aware of the existence of these laws,
and of stable relations of this kind. We know, for
instance, when we read a psychological novel,
that certain associations of ideas there depicted
for us are true, that they may have been lived ;
others offend us, or fail to give us an impression
of reality, because we feel in them the effect of
a connexion, mechanically and artificially brought
about, between different mental levels, as though
the author had not taken care to maintain him
self on that plane of the mental life which he
222 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
had chosen. Memory has then its successive
and distinct degrees of tension or of vitality:
they are certainly not easy to define, but the
painter of mental scenery may not with impunity
confound them. Pathology, moreover, here con
firms by means, it is true, of coarser examples
a truth of which we are all instinctively
aware. In the systematized amnesias of hyster
ical patients, for example, the recollections which
appear to be abolished are really present ; but
they are probably all bound up with a certain
determined tone of intellectual vitality in which
the subject can no longer place himself.
Just as there are these different planes, infinite
in number, for association by similarity, so there
are with association by contiguity. In
J *J at us t ^ ie extreme plane, which represents
diat?betwe e en ^ e ^ase ^ m emory, there is no recol-
the two - lection which is not linked by contiguity
tremes, the J o J
same memo- w ith the totality of the events which pre-
nes are sys- J
tematizedin ce( J e an( J ^Q ^th those which follow
diverse ways.
it. Whereas, at the point in space where
our action is concentrated, contiguity brings back,
in the form of movement, only the reaction which
immediately followed a former similar perception.
As a matter of fact, every association by conti
guity implies a position of the mind intermediate
between the two extreme limits. If, here again, we
imagine a number of possible repetitions of the total
ity of our memories, each of these copies of our
past life must be supposed to be cut up, in its own
CHAP, in DIFFERENT PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 223
way, into definite parts, and the cutting up is
not the same when we pass from one copy to
another, each of them being in fact character
ized by the particular kind of dominant mem
ories on which the other memories lean as
on supporting points. The nearer we come to
action, for instance, the more contiguity tends
to approximate to similarity and to be thus dis
tinguished from a mere relation of chronological
succession : thus we cannot say of the words
of a foreign language, when they call each other
up in memory, whether they are associated by
similarity or by contiguity. On the contrary,
the more we detach ourselves from action, real or
possible, the more association by contiguity tends
merely to reproduce the consecutive images
of our past life. It is impossible to enter
here into a profound study of these different
systems. It is sufficient to point out that these
systems are not formed of recollections laid side
by side like so many atoms. There are always
some dominant memories, shining points round
which the others form a vague nebulosity. These
shining points are multiplied in the degree in
which our memory expands. The process of local
izing a recollection in the past, for instance, can
not at all consist, as has been said, in plunging
into the mass of our memories as into a bag, to
draw out memories, closer and closer to each
other, between which the memory to be localized
may find its place. By what happy chance
224 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m
could we just hit upon on a growing number of
intercalary recollections ? The work of localiza
tion consists, in reality, in a growing effort of ex
pansion, by which the memory, always present in
its entirety to itself, spreads out its recollections
over an ever wider surface and so ends by dis
tinguishing, in what was till then a confused mass,
the remembrance which could not find its proper
place. Here again, moreover, the pathology of
memory is instructive. In retrogressive amnesia,
the recollections which disappear from conscious
ness are probably preserved in remote planes
of memory, and the patient can find them there
by an exceptional effort like that which is effected
in the hypnotic state. But on the lower planes
these memories await, so to speak, the dominant
image to which they may be fastened. A sharp
shock, a violent emotion, forms the decisive
event to which they cling ; and if this event, by
reason of its sudden character, is cut off from
the rest of our history, they follow it into
oblivion. We can understand, then, that the
oblivion which follows a physical or moral shock
should include the events which immediately
preceded it a phenomenon which is very difficult
to explain in all other conceptions of memory.
Let us remark in passing that if we refuse to
attribute some such waiting to recent, and even to
relatively distant, recollections, the normal work
of memory becomes unintelligible. For every
event of which the recollection is now imprinted
CHAP. HI ATTENTION TO LIFE 225
on the memory, however simple we suppose it
to be, has occupied a certain time. The percep
tions which filled the first period of this interval,
and now form with the later perceptions an
undivided memory, were then really loose as
long as the decisive part of the event had not
occurred and drawn them along. Between the
disappearance of a memory with its various pre
liminary details, and the abolition, in retrogres
sive amnesia, of a greater or less number of recol
lections previous to a given event, there is, then,
merely a difference of degree and not of kind.
From these various considerations on the lower
mental life results a certain view of intellectual
since the equilibrium. This equilibrium will be
u P set on ly by a perturbation of the
or- elements which serve as its matter.
f We cannot here go into questions of
u the depend mental pathology ; yet neither can we
thesSsori? f avoid them entirely, since we are
motor system, endeavouring to discover the exact
relation between body and mind.
We have supposed that the mind travels unceas
ingly over the interval comprised between its two
extreme limits, the plane of action and the plane of
dream. Let us suppose that we have to make a
decision. Collecting, organizing the totality of its
experience in what we call its character, the mind
causes it to converge upon actions in which we
shall afterwards find, together with the past
Q
226 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
which is their matter, the unforeseen form which is
stamped upon them by personality ; but the action
is not able to become real unless it succeeds in
encasing itself in the actual situation, that is to
say, in that particular assemblage of circumstances
which is due to the particular position of the body
in time and space. Let us suppose, now, that we
have to do a piece of intellectual work, to form
a conception, to extract a more or less general
idea from the multiplicity of our recollections.
A wide margin is left to fancy on the one hand,
to logical discernment on the other ; but, if the
idea is to live, it must touch present reality on
some side; that is to say, it must be able, from
step to step, and by progressive diminutions or
contractions of itself, to be more or less acted
by the body at the same time as it is thought
by the mind. Our body, with the sensations
which it receives on the one hand and the
movements which it is capable of executing on
the other, is, then, that which fixes our mind,
and gives it ballast and poise. The activity of
the mind goes far beyond the mass of accumulated
memories, as this mass of memories itself is
infinitely more than the sensations and move
ments of the present hour ; but these sensations
and these movements condition what we may
term our attention to life, and that is why every
thing depends on their cohesion in the normal
work of the mind, as in a pyramid which should
stand upon its apex.
CHAP, in MENTAL EQUILIBRIUM 227
If, moreover, we cast a glance at the minute
structure of the nervous system as recent dis
coveries have revealed it to us, we see every
where conducting lines, nowhere any centres.
Threads placed end to end, of which the
extremities probably touch when the current
passes : this is all that is seen. And perhaps
this is all there is, if it be true that the body is
only a place of meeting and transfer, where stimula
tions received result in movements accomplished, as
we have supposed it to be throughout this work.
But these threads which receive disturbances or
stimulations from the external world and return
them to it in the form of appropriate reactions,
these threads so beautifully stretched from the
periphery to the periphery, are just what ensure
by the solidity of their connexions and the
precision of their interweaving the sensori-
motor equilibrium of the body, that is to say
its adaptation to the present circumstances.
Relax this tension or destroy this equilibrium:
everything happens as if attention detached
itself from life. Dreams and insanity appear to
be little else than this.
sleep and We were speaking just now of the
rec ent hypothesis which attributes
slee P to an interruption of the soli-
mSto?fnnc- darity among the neurons. Even if
which they we ^ not accept this hypothesis
Jresen^ (which is, however, confirmed by some
reality. curious experiments) we must suppose,
228 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in
in deep sleep, at least a functional break in the
relation established in the nervous system be
tween stimulation and motor reaction. So that
dreams would always be the state of a mind
of which the attention was not fixed by the
sensori-motor equilibrium of the body. And it
appears more and more probable that this re
laxing of tension in the nervous system is due
to the poisoning of its elements by products of
their normal activity accumulated in the waking
state. Now, in every way dreams imitate insanity.
Not only are all the psychological symptoms of
madness found in dreams to such a degree that
the comparison of the two states has become
a commonplace but insanity appears also to
have its origin in an exhaustion of the brain,
which is caused, like normal fatigue, by the
accumulation of certain specific poisons in the
elements of the nervous system. 1 We know that
insanity is often a sequel to infectious diseases,
and that, moreover, it is possible to reproduce
experimentally, by toxic drugs, all the phenomena
of madness. 2 Is it not likely, therefore, that the
loss of mental equilibrium in the insane is simply
the result of a disturbance of the sensori-motor
relations established in the organism ? This
1 This idea has recently been developed by various authors.
A systematic account of it will be found in the work of Cowles,
The Mechanism of Insanity (American Journal of Insanity,
1890-1891).
1 See, in especial, Moreau de Tours, Du haschisch. Paris,
1845.
CHAF. in MENTAL EQUILIBRIUM 22Q
disturbance may be enough to create a sort of
psychic vertigo, and so cause memory and atten
tion to lose contact with reality. If we read the
descriptions given by some mad patients of the
beginning of their malady, we find that they often
feel a sensation of strangeness, or, as they say,
of unreality/ as if the things they perceived
had for them lost solidity and relief. 1 If our
analyses are correct, the concrete feeling that
we have of present reality consists, in fact, of
our consciousness of the actual movements where
by our organism is naturally responding to stimu
lation ; so that where the connecting links be
tween sensations and movements are slackened
or tangled, the sense of the real grows weaker
or disappears. 2
There are here, moreover, many distinctions
to be made, not only between the various forms
of insanity, but also between insanity properly
so-called and that division of the personality
which recent psychology has so ingeniously com
pared with it. 8 In these diseases of personality it
seems that groups of recollections detach themselves
from the central memory and forego their solid
arity with the others. But, then, it seldom occurs
that the patient does not also display accompany-
1 Ball, Legons sur les maladies mentales. Paris, 1890, p. 608
et seq. Cf . a curious analysis : Visions, a Personal Narrative,
Journal of Mental Science (1896, p. 284).
2 See above, p. 176.
1 Pierre Janet, Les accidents mentaux. Paris, 1894, p. 292
et seq.
230 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ni
ing scissions of sensibility and of motor activity. 1
We cannot help seeing in these latter phenomena
the real material substratum of the former. If
it be true that our intellectual life rests, as a whole,
upon its apex, that is to say upon the sensori-motor
functions by which it inserts itself into present
reality, intellectual equilibrium will be differently
affected as these functions are damaged in one
manner or in another. Now, besides the lesions
which affect the general vitality of the sensori-
motor functions, weakening or destroying what
we have called the sense of reality, there are others
which reveal themselves in a mechanical, not a
dynamical, diminution of these functions, as if
certain sensori-motor connexions merely parted
company with the rest. If we are right in our
hypothesis, memory is ver^ differently affected
in the two cases. In the first, no recollection is
taken away, but all recollections are less ballasted,
less solidly directed towards the real ; whence
arises a true disturbance of the mental equili
brium. In the second, the equilibrium is not
destroyed, but it loses something of its com
plexity. Recollections retain their normal as
pect, but forego a part of their solidarity, because
their sensori-motor base, instead of being, so
to speak, chemically changed, is mechanically
diminished. But neither in the one case nor in
the other are memories directly attacked or
damaged.
1 Pierre Janet, L automalisnte psychologique. Paris, 1898,
p. 95 et seq.
CHAP, m THE OFFICE OF THE BODY 23!
The idea that the body preserves memories in
the mechanical form of cerebral deposits, that the
loss or decrease of memory consists in
Injuries to the . , , i
brain affect the their more or less complete destruction,
motor prolon- ..,,... / j t_ i
gations through that the heightening of memory and hal-
which memo- .... . ,
ries are actual- lucmation consists, on the contrary, in
ized, or the ... ...
ensori-motor an excess of their activity, is not, then,
equilibrium , .
which condi- borne out either by reasoning or by facts.
tions our , .
attention The truth is that there is one case, and
cannot destroy one only, in which observation would
memories. - , .
seem at first to suggest this view : we
mean aphasia, or, more generally, the disturb
ance of auditory or visual recognition. This is
the only case in which the constant seat of the
disorder is in a determined convolution of the
brain ; but it is also precisely the case in which
we do not find a mechanical, immediate and
final destruction of certain definite recollections,
but rather the gradual and functional weakening of
the whole of the affected memory. And we have
explained how the cerebral lesion may effect this
weakening, without the necessity of supposing any
sort of provision of memories stored in the brain.
What the injury really attacks are the sensory and
motor regions corresponding to this class of percep
tion, and especially those adjuncts through which
they may be set in motion from within ; so that
memory, finding nothing to catch hold of, ends by
becoming practically powerless: now, in psychology,
powerlessness means unconsciousness. In all other
cases, the lesion observed or supposed, never defi-
232 MATTER AND MEMORY OHAP. in
nitely localized, acts by the disturbance which it
causes to the whole of the sensori-motor con
nexions, either by damaging or by breaking up
this mass : whence results a breach or a simplifying
of the intellectual equilibrium, and, by ricochet,
the disorder or the disjunction of memory. The
doctrine which makes of memory an immediate
function of the brain a doctrine which raises
insoluble theoretical difficulties a doctrine the
complexity of which defies all imagination, and the
results of which are incompatible with the data
of introspection cannot even count upon the sup
port of cerebral pathology. All the facts and all
the analogies are in favour of a theory which
regards the brain as only an intermediary between
sensation and movement, which sees in this
aggregate of sensations and movements the pointed
end of mental life a point ever pressed forward
into the tissue of events, and, attributing thus to the
body the sole function of directing memory to
wards the real and of binding it to the present,
considers memory itself as absolutely independent
of matter. In this sense, the brain contributes to
the recall of the useful recollection, but still more
to the provisional banishment of all the others.
We cannot see how memory could settle within
matter ; but we do clearly understand how
according to the profound saying of a contempor
ary philosopher materiality begets oblivion 1
1 Ravaisson, La philosophic en France au xix? si&cle, 3rd
edit., p. 176.
CHAPTER IV
THE DELIMITING AND FIXING OF IMAGES.
PERCEPTION AND MATTER. SOUL AND BODY.
ONE general conclusion follows from the first
three chapters of this book : it is that the body,
always turned towards action, has for its
mmtanaw essential function to limit, with a view
clnlfe Ts~ to action, the life of the spirit. In regard
&&gt; e nof enta ~ to representations it is an instrument of
fowa C rd S asne8S choice, and of choice alone. It can
neither beget nor cause an intellectual
state. Consider perception, to begin with. The
body, by the place which at each moment it occupies
in the universe, indicates the parts and the aspects
of matter on which we can lay hold : our percep
tion, which exactly measures our virtual action on
things, thus limits itself to the objects which ac
tually influence our organs and prepare our move
ments. Now let us turn to memory. The function
of the body is not to store up recollections, but
simply to choose, in order to bring back to distinct
consciousness, by the real efficacy thus conferred
on it, the useful memory, that which may com
plete and illuminate the present situation with a
233
234 MATTER AND MEMORY CHA. iv
view to ultimate act ion. It is true that this second
choice is much less strictly determined than the
first, because our past experience is an individual and
no longer a common experience, because we have
always many different recollections equally capable
of squaring with the same actual situation, and
because nature cannot here, as in the case of per
ception, have one inflexible rule for delimiting our
representations. A certain margin is, therefore,
necessarily left in this case to fancy ; and though
animals scarcely profit by it, bound as they are to
material needs, it would seem that the human mind
ceaselessly presses with the totality of its memory
against the door which the body may half open
to it : hence the play of fancy and the work of
imagination so many liberties which the mind
takes with nature. It is none the less true that
the orientation of our consciousness towards action
appears to be the fundamental law of our psychi
cal life.
Strictly, we might stop here, for this work was
undertaken to define the function of the body in
the life of the spirit. But, on the one hand, we
have raised by the way a metaphysical problem
which we cannot bring ourselves to leave in sus
pense ; and on the other, our researches, although
mainly psychological, have on several occasions
given us glimpses, if not of the means of solving
the problem, at any rate of the side on which it
should be approached.
This problem is no less than that of the union of
CHAP, iv THE PROBLEM OF DUALISM 235
soul and body. It comes before us clearly and
A true with urgency , because we make a profound
psychology, distinction between matter and spirit.
distinguishing
between And we cannot regard it as insoluble,
spirit and
matter, yet since we define spirit and matter by
suggests the J
manner of positive characters, and not by nega-
their union. r J
tions. It is in very truth within matter
that pure perception places us, and it is really into
spirit that we penetrate by means of memory.
But on the other hand, whilst introspection reveals
to us the distinction between matter and spirit,
it also bears witness to their union. Either,
then, our analyses are vitiated db origine, or they
must help us to issue from the difficulties that
they raise.
The obscurity of this problem, in all doctrines,
is due to the double antithesis which our under-
standing establishes between the ex-
the S doubie tended and the unextended on the one
between quality and quantity on
other. It is certain that mind, first
^> stands over against matter as a
Sw a perceived P ure um ty m * ace ^ an essentially
universe. divisible multiplicity ; and moreover
that our perceptions are composed of heterogene
ous qualities, whereas the perceived universe
seems to resolve itself into homogeneous and cal
culable changes. There would thus be inexten-
sion and quality on the one hand, extensity
and quantity on the other. We have repu
diated materialism, which derives the first term
236 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
from the second ; but neither do we accept
idealism, which holds that the second is con
structed by the first. We maintain, as against
materialism, that perception overflows infi
nitely the cerebral state ; but we have en
deavoured to establish, as against idealism,
that matter goes in every direction beyond our
representation of it, a representation which the
mind has gathered out of it, so to speak, by
an intelligent choice. Of these two opposite
doctrines, the one attributes to the body and the
other to the intellect a true power of creation, the
first insisting that our brain begets representation
and the second that our understanding designs the
plan of nature. And against these two doctrines
we invoke the same testimony, that of conscious
ness, which shows us our body as one image
among others and our understanding as a certain
faculty of dissociating, of distinguishing, of oppos
ing logically, but not of creating or of construct
ing. Thus, willing captives of psychological
analysis and consequently of common sense, it
would seem that, after having exacerbated the
conflicts raised by ordinary dualism, we have
closed all the avenues of escape which metaphysic
might set open to us.
But, just because we have pushed dualism to an
extreme, our analysis has perhaps dissociated its
contradictory elements. The theory of pure per
ception on the one hand, of pure memory on the
other, may thus prepare the way for a reconcili-
CHAP, iv THE PROBLEM OF DUALISM 237
ation between the unextended and the extended,
between quality and quantity.
To take pure perception first. When we make
the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in
no sense the condition of a perception,
Bat since
pare percep- W e place the perceived images of things
of things, these outside the image of our body, and
share in the J
natore oi _ thus replace perception within the things
me idea of themselves. But then, our perception
extension. f
being a part of things, things participate
in the nature of our perception. Material ex-
tensity is not, cannot any longer be, that compo
site extensity which is considered in geometry ;
it indeed resembles rather the undivided exten
sion of our own representation. That is to say
that the analysis of pure perception allows us to
foreshadow in the idea of extension the possible
approach to each other of the extended and
the unextended.
But our conception of pure memory should
lead us, by a parallel road, to attenuate the second
And the opposition, that of quality and quantity.
of et s e e r nffi ity For we have radically separated pure
recollection from the cerebral state
in which continues it and renders it efnca-
: tb * cious. Memory is, then, in no degree an
tension. emanation of matter ; on the contrary,
matter, as grasped in concrete perception which
always occupies a certain duration, is in great
part the work of memory. Now where is, pre
cisely, the difference between the heterogeneous
238 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rv
qualities which succeed each other in our con
crete perception and the homogeneous changes
which science puts at the back of these perceptions
in space ? The first are discontinuous and can
not be deduced one from another ; the second,
on the contrary, lend themselves to calculation.
But, in order that they may lend themselves to
calculation, there is no need to make them into
pure quantities : we might as well say that they
are nothing at all. It is enough that their hetero
geneity should be, so to speak, sufficiently diluted
to become, from our point of view, practically
negligible. Now, if every concrete perception,
however short we suppose it, is already a
synthesis, made by memory, of an infinity of
pure perceptions which succeed each other,
must we not think that the heterogeneity of
sensible qualities is due to their being contracted
in our memory, and the relative homogeneity
of objective changes to the slackness of their
natural tension ? And might not the interval
between quantity and quality be lessened by
considerations of tension, as the distance be
tween the extended and the uriextended is les
sened by considerations of extension ?
Before entering on this question, let us formu
late the general principle of the method we would
apply. We have already made use of it hi an
earlier work and even, by implication, in the
present essay.
That which is commonly called a fact is not
CHAP, iv DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD 239
reality as it appears to immediate intuition, but
The method of an adaptation of the real to the interests
philosophy. / , j .- .
objects and oi practice and to the exigencies of
have S been social life. Pure intuition, external or
a pMi- internal, is that of an undivided con-
tinuity. We break up this continuity
reah-ty itself. into e i emen ts laid side by side, which
correspond in the one case to distinct words,
in the other to independent objects. But, just
because we have thus broken the unity of our
original intuition, we feel ourselves obliged to
establish between the severed terms a bond which
can only then be external and superadded. For
the living unity, which was one with internal
continuity, we substitute the factitious unity
of an empty diagram as lifeless as the parts
which it holds together. Empiricism and dog
matism are, at bottom, agreed in starting from
phenomena so reconstructed ; they differ only in
that dogmatism attaches itself more particularly
to the form and empiricism to the matter. Em
piricism, feeling indeed, but feeling vaguely, the
artificial character of the relations which unite
the terms together, holds to the terms and
neglects the relations. Its error is not that
it sets too high a value on experience, but
that it substitutes for true experience, that ex
perience which arises from the immediate contact
of the mind with its object, an experience which is
disarticulated and therefore, most probably, dis
figured, at any rate arranged for the greater
240 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
facility of action and of language. Just because
this parcelling of the real has been effected in view
of the exigencies of practical life, it has not followed
the internal lines of the structure of things : for
that very reason empiricism cannot satisfy the
mind in regard to any of the great problems and,
indeed, whenever it becomes fully conscious of its
own principle, it refrains from putting them.
Dogmatism discovers and disengages the diffi
culties to which empiricism is blind ; but it really
seeks the solution along the very road that
empiricism has marked out. It accepts, at the
hands of empiricism, phenomena that are separate
and discontinuous, and simply endeavours to effect
a synthesis of them which, not having been given
by intuition, cannot but be arbitrary. In other
words, if metaphysic is only a construction, there
are several systems of metaphysic equally plau
sible, which consequently refute each other,
and the last word must remain with a critical
philosophy, which holds all knowledge to be re
lative and the ultimate nature of things to be
inaccessible to the mind. Such is, in truth, the
ordinary course of philosophic thought : we start
from what we take to be experience, we attempt
various possible arrangements of the fragments
which apparently compose it, and when at last we
feel bound to acknowledge the fragility of every
edifice that we have built, we end by giving
up all effort to build. But there is a last enter
prise that might be undertaken. It would be to
CHAP, iv DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD 241
seek experience at its source, or rather above that
decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction
of our utility, it becomes properly human experi
ence. The impotence of speculative reason, as
Kant has demonstrated it, is perhaps at bottom
only the impotence of an intellect enslaved to
certain necessities of bodily life, and concerned
with a matter which man has had to disorganize
for the satisfaction of his wants. Our knowledge of
things would thus no longer be relative to the
fundamental structure of our mind, but only to its
superficial and acquired habits, to the contingent
form which it derives from our bodily functions
and from our lower needs. The relativity of
knowledge may not, then, be definitive. By
unmaking that which these needs have made, we
may restore to intuition its original purity and
so recover contact with the real.
This method presents, in its application, diffi
culties which are considerable and ever recurrent,
because it demands for the solution of each new
problem an entirely new effort. To give up certain
habits of thinking, and even of perceiving, is far
from easy : yet this is but the negative part of the
work to be done ; and when it is done, when we
have placed ourselves at what we have called the
turn of experience, when we have profited by the
faint light which, illuminating the passage from
the immediate to the useful, marks the dawn of our
human experience, there still remains to be recon
stituted, with the infinitely small elements which
242 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP . iv
we thus perceive of the real curve, the curve itself
stretching out into the darkness behind them.
In this sense the task of the philosopher, as we
understand it, closely resembles that of the mathe
matician who determines a function by starting
from the differential. The final effort of philo
sophical research is a true work of integration.
We have already attempted to apply this
method to the problem of consciousness j 1 and it
appeared to us that the utilitarian work of the mind,
in what concerns the perception of our inner life,
consisted in a sort of refracting of pure duration
into space, a refracting which permits us to separate
our psychical states, to reduce them to a more
and more impersonal form and to impose names
upon them, in short, to make them enter the cur
rent of social life. Empiricism and dogmatism
take interior states in this discontinuous
cism and form ; the first confining itself to the
dogmatism
alike take states themselves, so that it can see in
rc&litv
in a discon- the self only a succession of juxtaposed
tinnous form,
ignoring facts ; the other grasping the necessity
duration. vn j u i. j
of a bond, but unable to find this bond
anywhere except in a form or in a force, an
exterior form into which the aggregate is inserted,
an indetermined and so to speak physical force
which assures the cohesion of the elements. Hence
the two opposing points of view as to the question
1 Time and Free Will, H. Bergson. Published by Sonnen-
schein & Co. Translation of Les donnees immtdiates de la
conscience.
CHAP, iv DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD 243
of freedom : for determinism the act is the result
ant of a mechanical composition of the elements ;
for the adversaries of that doctrine, if they adhered
strictly to their principle, the free decision would
be an arbitrary fiat, a true creation ex nihilo.
It seemed to us that a third course lay open. This
is to replace ourselves in pure duration, of which
the flow is continuous and in which we pass insensi
bly from one state to another : a continuity which
is really lived, but artincally decomposed for the
greater convenience of customary knowledge.
Then, it seemed to us, we saw the action issue from
its antecedents by an evolution sui generis, in such
a way that we find in this action the antecedents
which explain it, while it yet adds to these some
thing entirely new, being an advance upon them
such as the fruit is upon the flower. Freedom is
not hereby, as has been asserted, reduced to sen
sible spontaneity. At most this would be the
case in the animal, of which the psychical life is
mainly affective. But in man, the thinking being,
the free act may be termed a synthesis of feelings
and ideas, and the evolution which leads to it a
reasonable evolution. The artifice of this method
simply consists, in short, in distinguishing the
point of view of customary or useful knowledge
from that of true knowledge. The duration
wherein we see ourselves acting, and in which it is
useful that we should see ourselves, is a duration
whose elements are dissociated and juxtaposed.
The duration wherein we act is a duration wherein
244 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rv
our states melt into each other. It is within this
that we should try to replace ourselves by
thought, in the exceptional and unique case when
we speculate on the intimate nature of action, that
is to say, when we are discussing human freedom.
Is a method of this kind applicable to the prob
lem of matter ? The question is, whether, in this
diversity of phenomena of which Kant spoke,
that part which shows a vague tendency to
wards extension could be seized by us on the
hither side of the homogeneous space to which
it is applied and through which we subdivide it,
just as that part which goes to make up our
own inner life can be detached from time,
equally ignore empty and indefinite, and brought back
that extension, , ~ . . . .
concrete and to pure duration. Certainly it would
beneath which be a chimerical enterprise to try to free
an artificial ourselves from the fundamental con
ditions of external perception. But the
question is whether certain conditions, which
we usually regard as fundamental, do not rather
concern the use to be made of things, the
practical advantage to be drawn from them, far
more than the pure knowledge which we can have
of them. More particularly, in regard to concrete
extension, continuous, diversified and at the same
time organized, we do not see why it should be
bound up with the amorphous and inert space
which subtends it a space which we divide in
definitely, out of which we carve figures arbitrar
ily, and in which movement itself, as we have
CHAP, iv DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD 245
said elsewhere, can only appear as a multiplicity of
instantaneous positions, since nothing there can
ensure the coherence of past with present. It
might, then, be possible, in a certain measure, to
transcend space without stepping out from
extensity ; and here we should really have a
return to the immediate, since we do indeed per
ceive extensity, whereas space is merely conceived,
being a kind of mental diagram. It may be urged
against this method that it arbitrarily attri
butes a privileged value to immediate know
ledge ? But what reasons should we have for
doubting any knowledge, would the idea of doubt
ing it ever occur to us, but for the difficulties
and the contradictions which reflexion discovers,
but for the problems which philosophy poses ?
And would not immediate knowledge find in itself
its justification and proof, if we could show that
these difficulties, contradictions and problems
are mainly the result of the symbolic diagrams
which cover it up, diagrams which have for us
become reality itself, and beyond which only an
intense and unusual effort can succeed in pene
trating ?
Let us choose at once, among the results to
which the application of this method may lead,
those which concern our present enquiry. We
must confine ourselves to mere suggestions ;
there can be no question here of constructing a
theory of matter.
246 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, nr
I. Every movement, inasmuch as it is a passage
from rest to rest, is absolutely indivisible.
This is not an hypothesis, but a fact, generally
masked by an hypothesis.
Here, for example, is my hand, placed at the
point A. I carry it to the point B, passing at one
stroke through the interval between them. There
are two things in this movement : an image which
I see, and an act of which my muscular sense
makes my consciousness aware. My consciousness
gives me the [inward feeling of a single fact,
for in A was rest, in B there is again rest, and
between A and B is placed an indivisible or at
least an undivided act, the passage from rest to
Movement res * which is movement itself. But
IM^MUS m y sight perceives the movement in
trajectory oi the form of a line AB which is traversed,
bo?ythaf is 3Ln ^ *^ s ^ me ^ e ^ space, may be
divisible. indefinitely divided. It seems then, at
first sight, that I may at will take this move
ment to be multiple or indivisible, according as
I consider it in space or in time, as an image which
takes shape outside of me or as an act which I
am myself accomplishing.
Yet, when I put aside all preconceived ideas,
I soon perceive that I have no such choice, that
even my sight takes in the movement from A to B
as an indivisible whole, and that if it divides any
thing, it is the line supposed to have been traversed,
and not the movement traversing it. It is indeed
CHAP, rv INDIVISIBILITY OF MOVEMENT 247
true that my hand does not go from A to B with
out passing through the intermediate positions,
and that these intermediate points resemble
stages, as numerous as you please, all along the
route ; but there is, between the divisions so
marked out and stages properly so called, this
capital difference, that at a stage we halt, where
as at these points the moving body passes. Now
a passage is a movement and a halt is an immo
bility. The halt interrupts the movement ; the pas
sage is one with the movement itself. When I see
the moving body pass any point, I conceive, no
doubt, that it might stop there ; and even when
it does not stop there, I incline to consider its
passage as an arrest, though infinitely short,
because I must have at least the time to think
of it ; but it is only my imagination which stops
there, and what the moving body has to do is, on
the contrary, to move. As every point of space
necessarily appears to me fixed, I find it ex
tremely difficult not to attribute to the moving
body itself the immobility of the point with
which, for a moment, I make it coincide ; it
seems to me, then, when I reconstitute the total
movement, that the moving body has stayed an
infinitely short time at every point of its trajec
tory. But we must not confound the data of the
senses, which perceive the movement, with the
artifice of the mind, which recomposes it. The
senses, left to themselves, present to us the real
movement, between two real halts, as a solid
248 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
and undivided whole. The division is the work
of our imagination, of which indeed the office is
to fix the moving images of our ordinary experi
ence, like the instantaneous flash which illumin
ates a stormy landscape by night.
We discover here, at its outset, the illusion which
accompanies and masks the perception of real
movement. Movement visibly consists in passing
from one point to another, and consequently in
traversing space. Now the space which is tra
versed is infinitely divisible ; and as the move
ment is, so to speak, applied to the line along
which it passes, it appears to be one with this
line and, like it, divisible. Has not the move
ment itself drawn the line ? Has it not traversed
in turn the successive and juxtaposed points of
that line ? Yes, no doubt, but these points have
no reality except in a line drawn, that is to say
motionless ; and by the very fact that you
represent the movement to yourself successively
in these different points, you necessarily arrest
it in each of them ; your successive positions
are, at bottom, only so many imaginary halts.
You substitute the path for the journey, and
because the journey is subtended by the path
you think that the two coincide. But how
should a progress coincide with a thing, a move
ment with an immobility ?
What facilitates this illusion is that we dis
tinguish moments in the course of duration, like
halts in the passage of the moving body. Even
CHAP, iv INDIVISIBILITY OF MOVEMENT 249
if we grant that the movement from one point to
another forms an undivided whole, this move
ment nevertheless takes a certain time ; so that
if we carve out of this duration an indivisible
instant, it seems that the moving body must oc
cupy, at that precise moment, a certain position,
which thus stands out from the whole. The indi
visibility of motion implies, then, the impossibil
ity of real instants ; and indeed, a very brief
analysis of the idea of duration will show us both
why we attribute instants to duration and why
it cannot have any. Suppose a simple movement
like that of my hand when it goes from A to B.
This passage is given to my consciousness as
an undivided whole. No doubt it endures ; but
this duration, which in fact coincides with the
aspect which the movement has inwardly
for my consciousness, is, like it, whole and
undivided. Now, while it presents itself, qua
movement, as a simple fact, it describes in space
a trajectory which I may consider, for purposes
of simplification, as a geometrical line ; and the
extremities of this line, considered as abstract
limits, are no longer lines, but indivisible points.
Now, if the line, which the moving body has
described, measures for me the duration of its
movement, must not the point, where the line
ends, symbolize for me a terminus of this dura
tion ? And if this point is an indivisible of length,
how shall we avoid terminating the duration of
the movement by an indivisible of duration ? If
25O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
the total line represents the total duration, the parts
of the line must, it seems, correspond to parts
of the duration, and the points of the line to
moments of time. The indivisibles of duration,
or moments of time, are born, then, of the need
of symmetry ; we come to them naturally as
soon as we demand from space an integral pre
sentment of duration. But herein, precisely, lies
the error. While the line AB symbolizes the
duration already lapsed of the movement from A
to B already accomplished, it cannot, motion
less, represent the movement in its accomplish
ment nor duration in its flow. And from
the fact that this line is divisible into parts
and that it ends in points, we cannot conclude
either that the corresponding duration is com
posed of separate parts or that it is limited by
instants.
The arguments of Zeno of Elea have no other
origin than this illusion. They all consist in
zeno trans- making time and movement coincide
fers to the
moving body with the line which underlies them, in
the proper
ties oi its attributing to them the same sub-
trajectory : . . t , .
hence aii the divisions as to the line, in short in
difficulties and
contradictions treating them like that line. In this
confusion Zeno was encouraged by common
sense, which usually carries over to the movement
the properties of its trajectory, and also - by
language, which always translates movement
and duration in terms of space. But common
sense and language have a right to do so
CHAP, iv INDIVISIBILITY OF MOVEMENT 251
and are even bound to do so, for, since they
always regard the becoming as a thing to be
made use of, they have no more concern with
the interior organization of movement than
a workman has with the molecular structure of
his tools. In holding movement to be divisible,
as its trajectory is, common sense merely expresses
the two facts which alone are of importance in
practical life: first, that every movement de
scribes a space ; second, that at every point of
this space the moving body might stop. But the
philosopher who reasons upon the inner nature
of movement is bound to restore to it the mobility
which is its essence, and this is what Zeno omits
to do. By the first argument (the Dichotomy)
he supposes the moving body to be at rest, and
then considers nothing but the stages, infinite in
number, that are along the line to be traversed :
we cannot imagine, he says, how the body could
ever get through the interval between them.
But in this way he merely proves that it is
impossible to construct, d priori, movement with
immobilities, a thing no man ever doubted.
The sole question is whether, movement being
posited as a fact, there is a sort of retrospective
absurdity in assuming that an infinite number
of points has been passed through. But at
this we need not wonder, since movement is an
undivided fact, or a series of undivided facts,
whereas the trajectory is infinitely divisible. In
the second argument (the Achilles) movement is
252 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, nr
indeed given, it is even attributed to two moving
bodies, but, always by the same error, there is
an assumption that their movement coincides
with their path, and that we may divide
it, like the path itself, in any way we please.
Then, instead of recognizing that the tortoise
has the pace of a tortoise and Achilles the pace
of Achilles, so that after a certain number of these
indivisible acts or bounds Achilles will have
outrun the tortoise, the contention is that we
may disarticulate as we will the movement of
Achilles and, as we will also, the movement of the
tortoise : thus reconstructing both in an arbi
trary .way, according to a law of our own which
may be incompatible with the real conditions
of mobility. The same fallacy appears, yet
more evident, in the third argument (the Arrow)
which consists in the conclusion that, because
it is possible to distinguish points on the path
of a moving body, we have the right to distinguish
indivisible moments in the duration of its move
ment. But the most instructive of Zeno s argu
ments is perhaps the fourth (the Stadium) which
has, we believe, been unjustly disdained, and of
which the absurdity is more manifest only because
the postulate masked in the three others is here
frankly displayed. 1 Without entering on a dis-
1 We may here briefly recall this argument. Let there
be a moving body which is displaced with a certain velocity,
and which passes simultaneously before two bodies, one at
rest and the other moving towards it with the same velocity
CHAP, iv INDIVISIBILITY OF MOVEMENT 253
cussion which would here be out of place, we will
content ourselves with observing that motion, as
given to spontaneous perception, is a fact which is
quite clear, and that the difficulties and contra
dictions pointed out by the Eleatic school concern
far less the living movement itself than a dead
and artificial reorganization of movement by the
mind. But we now come to the conclusion of all
the preceding paragraphs :
as its own. During the same time that it passes a certain
length of the first body, it naturally passes double that length
of the other. Whence Zeno concludes that a duration is
the double of itself. A childish argument, it is said, because
Zeno takes no account of the fact that the velocity is in the
one case double that which it is in the other. Certainly, but
how, I ask, could he be aware of this ? That, in the same
time, a moving body passes different lengths of two bodies,
of which one is at rest and the other in motion, is clear for
him who makes of duration a kind of absolute, and places
it either in consciousness or in something which partakes
of consciousness. For while a determined portion of this
absolute or conscious duration elapses, the same moving
body will traverse, as it passes the two bodies, two spaces of
which the one is the double of the other, without our being
able to conclude from this that a duration is double itself,
since duration remains independent of both spaces. But
Zeno s error, in all his reasoning, is due to just this fact,
that he leaves real duration on one side, and considers only
its objective track in space. How then should the two
lines traced by the same moving body not merit an equal
consideration, qua measures of duration ? And how should
they not represent the same duration, even though the one
is twice the other ? In concluding from this that a duration
is the double of itself, Zeno was true to the logic of his hypo
thesis ; and his fourth argument is worth exactly as much
as the three others.
254 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rv
//. There are real movements.
The mathematician, expressing with greater pre
cision an idea of common sense, defines position
by the distance from points of reference
Movement f -, , . ,
is relative or from axes, and movement by the
only for the ... , ,, ,. . _. .
mathema- variation of the distance. Of move-
tician, real , u , -,
for the ment, then, he only retains changes in
length ; and as the absolute values of
the variable distance between a point and an
axis, for instance, express either the displacement
of the axis with regard to the point or that
of the point with regard to the axis, just as we
please, he attributes indifferently to the same point
repose or motion. If, then, movement is no
thing but a change of distance, the same object
is in motion or motionless according to the
points to which it is referred, and there is no
absolute movement.
But things wear a very different aspect when
we pass from mathematics to physics, and from
the abstract study of motion to a consideration
of the concrete changes occurring in the universe.
Though we are free to attribute rest or motion
to any material point taken by itself, it is none
the less true that the aspect of the material
universe changes, that the internal configuration
of every real system varies, and that here we have
no longer the choice between mobility and rest.
Movement, whatever its inner nature, becomes
an indisputable reality. We may not be able
to say what parts of the whole are in motion ;
CHAP, iv REAL MOVEMENT 255
motion there is in the whole, none the less.
Therefore it is not surprising that the same
thinkers, who maintain that every particular
movement is relative, speak oi the totality of
movements as of an absolute. The contradiction
has been pointed out in Descartes, who, after hav
ing given to the thesis of relativity its most radical
form by affirming that all movement is recip
rocal, x formulated the laws of motion as though
motion were an absolute. Leibniz and others
after him have remarked this contradiction 8 :
it is due simply to the fact that Descartes handles
motion as a physicist after having denned it as a
geometer. For the geometer all movement is
relative : which signifies only, in our view, that
none of our mathematical symbols can express the
fact that it is the moving body which is in motion
rather than the axes or the points to which it is
referred. And this is very natural, because
these symbols, always meant for measurement,
can express only distances. But that there
is real motion no one can seriously deny : if
there were not, nothing in the universe would
change ; and, above all, there would be no meaning
in the consciousness which we have of our own
movements. In his controversy with Descartes
Henry More makes jesting allusion to this last
1 Descartes, Principes, ii, 29.
1 Principes, part ii, 37 et seq.
* Leibniz, Specimen dynamicum (Mathem. Schriften,
Gerhardt, 2nd section, vol. ii, p. 246).
256 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAF. iv
point : When I am quietly seated, and another,
going a thousand paces away, is flushed with
fatigue, it is certainly he who moves and I who
am at rest. l
But if there is absolute motion, is it possible
to persist in regarding movement as nothing
but a change of place ? We should then
have to make diversity of place into
any real move- an absolute difference, and distinguish
ment*. they , , . . -LI
cannot be absolute positions in an absolute space.
changes of Newton * went as far as this, followed
moreover by Euler * and by others.
But can this be imagined, or even conceived ?
A place could be absolutely distinguished from
another place only by its quality or by its rela
tion to the totality of space : so that space
would become, on this hypothesis, either com
posed of heterogeneous parts or finite. But to
finite space we should give another space as
boundary, and beneath heterogeneous parts of
space we should imagine an homogeneous space
as its foundation : in both cases it is to homogen
eous and indefinite space that we should neces
sarily return. We cannot, then, hinder ourselves
either from holding every place to be relative,
or from believing some motion to be absolute.
It may be urged that real movement is dis
tinguished from relative movement in that it
1 H. Moms, Scripta PhilosopMca, 1679, vol. ii, p. 248.
8 Newton, Principia, Ed. Thomson, 1871, p. 6 et seq.
3 Euler, Theoriumotuscorpor urn solidorum, 1765, pp. 30-33.
CHAP, iv REAL MOVEMENT 257
has a real cause, that it emanates from a force.
But we must understand what we mean by this
last word. In natural science force is only a
function of mass and velocity : it is measured
by acceleration : it is known and estimated only
by the movements which it is supposed to
produce in space. One with these movements,
it shares their relativity. Hence the physicists,
who seek the principle of absolute motion in force
so denned, are led by the logic of their system
back to the hypothesis of an absolute space which
they had^at first desired to avoid. 1 So it will be
come necessary to take refuge in the metaphy
sical sense of the word, and attribute the motion
which we perceive in space to profound causes,
analogous to those which our consciousness be
lieves it discovers within the feeling of effort.
But is the feeling of effort really the sense of
a profound cause ? Have not decisive analyses
shown that there is nothing in this feeling other
than the consciousness of movements already
effected or begun at the periphery of the body ?
It is in vain, then, that we seek to found the
reality of motion on a cause which is distinct
from it : analysis always brings us back to
motion itself.
But why seek elsewhere ? So long as we apply
a movement to the line along which it passes,
the same point will appear to us, by turns, accord
ing to the points or the axes to which we
* Newton, in particular.
258 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
refer it, either at rest or in movement. But it
is otherwise if we draw out of the movement the
mobility which is its essence. When my eyes give
me the sensation of a movement, this sensation is
a reality, and something is effectually going on,
whether it be that an object is changing its place
before my eyes or that my eyes are moving
before the object. A fortiori am I assured of
the reality of the movement when I produce
it after having willed to produce it, and my
muscular sense brings me the consciousness
of it. That is to say, I grasp the reality of
movement when it appears to me, within me, as a
change of state or of quality. But then how should
it be otherwise when I perceive changes of quality
in things ? Sound differs absolutely from silence,
as also one sound from another sound. Between
light and darkness, between colours, between
shades, the difference is absolute. The passage
from one to another is also an absolutely real
phenomenon. I hold then the two ends of the
chain, muscular sensations within me, the sensible
qualities of matter without me, and neither in
the one case nor in the other do I see movement,
if there be movement, as a mere relation : it is an
absolute. Now, between these two extremities lie
the movements of external bodies, properly so
called. How are we to distinguish here between real
and apparent movement ? Of what object, exter
nally perceived, can it be said that it moves, of
what other that it remains motionless ? To put
CHAP, iv PERCEPTION AND MATTER 25Q
such a question is to admit that the discontinuity
established by common sense between objects
independent of each other, having each its indi
viduality, comparable to kinds of persons, is a valid
distinction. For, on the contrary hypothesis,
the question would no longer be how are pro
duced in given parts of matter changes of posi
tion, but how is effected in the whole a change
of aspect, a change of which we should then have
to ascertain the nature. Let us then formulate
at once our third proposition :
///. All division of matter into independent
bodies with absolutely determined outlines is an
artificial division.
A body, that is, an independent material object,
presents itself at first to us as a system of qualities
The division oi m which resistance and colour the data
of si g ht and touch occupy the centre,
a11 tne rest bein g> ^ ^ were > suspended
from them. On the ther hand > the
we w!Sr if data * si g nt and touch are those which
most obviously have extension in space,
an( j ^he essential character of space is
continuity. There are intervals of silence between
sounds, for the sense of hearing is not always oc
cupied ; between odours, between tastes, there are
gaps, as though the senses of smell and taste only
functioned accidentally : as soon as we open
our eyes, on the contrary, the whole field of vision
takes on colour ; and, since solids are necessarily
in contact with each other, our touch must follow
2OO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
the surface or the edges of objects without ever
encountering a true interruption. How do we
parcel out the continuity of material extensity,
given in primary perception, into bodies of which
each is supposed to have its substance and in
dividuality ? No doubt the aspect of this con
tinuity changes from moment to moment ; but
why do we not purely and simply realize that
the whole has changed, as with the turning of
a kaleidoscope ? Why, in short, do we seek, in the
mobility of the whole, tracks that are supposed to
be followed by bodies supposed to be in motion ?
A moving continuity is given to us, in which every
thing changes and yet remains : whence comes
it that we dissociate the two terms, permanence and
change, and then represent permanence by bodies
and change by homogeneous movements in space ?
This is no teaching of immediate intuition ; but
neither is it a demand of science, for the object
of science is, on the contrary, to rediscover the
natural articulations of a universe we have carved
artificially. _ Nay more, science, as we shall see,
by an evermore complete demonstration of the
reciprocal action of all material points upon each
other, returns, in spite of appearances, to the idea
of an universal continuity. Science and conscious
ness are agreed at bottom, provided that we re
gard consciousness in its most immediate data,
and science in its remotest aspirations. Whence
comes then the irresistible tendency to set up a
material universe that is discontinuous, composed
CHAP, iv PERCEPTION AND MATTER 261
of bodies which have clearly defined outlines and
change their place, that is, their relation with
each other ?
Besides consciousness and science, there is life.
Beneath the principles of speculation, so carefully
it is the analysed by philosophers, there are ten-
of e ii^ing? s dencies of which the study has been neg-
tiiat mark lected, and which are to be explained
consciousness simply by the necessity of living, that
distinct . - .. A , , ,
bodies. is, of acting. Already the power con
ferred on the individual consciousness of mani
festing itself in acts requires the formation
of distinct material zones, which correspond re
spectively to living bodies : in this sense my own
body and, by analogy with it, all other living
bodies are those which I have the most right
to distinguish in the continuity of the universe.
But this body itself, as soon as it is constituted
and distinguished, is led by its various needs
to distinguish and constitute other bodies. In
the humblest living being nutrition demands
research, then contact, in short a series of efforts
which converge towards a centre : this centre is
just what is made into an object the object
which will serve as food. Whatever be the
nature of matter, it may be said that life will
at once establish in it a primary discontinuity,
expressing the duality of the need and of that
which must serve to satisfy it. But the need
of food is not the only need. Others group
themselves round it, all having for object the
262 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
conservation of the individual or of the spe
cies ; and each of them leads us to distin
guish, besides our own body, bodies inde
pendent of it which we must seek or avoid. Our
needs are, then, so many search-lights which,
directed upon the continuity of sensible qualities,
single out in it distinct bodies. They cannot
satisfy themselves except upon the condition that
they carve out, within this continuity, a body
which is to be their own, and then delimit
other bodies with which the first can enter into
relation, as if with persons. To establish these
special relations among portions thus carved out
from sensible reality is just what we call living.
But if this first subdivision of the real answers
much less to immediate intuition than to the
But, to get a fundamental needs of life, are we likely
fheipJ OBhicml to g ain a nearer knowledge of things by
we mnrt rejtct Pushing the division yet further ? In this
?mS ary wa Y we do indeed prolong the vital move-
?rac5caf y merit ; but we turn our back upon true
needs. knowledge. That is why the rough and
ready operation, which consists in decomposing
the body into parts of the same nature as itself,
leads us down a blind alley, where we soon feel
ourselves incapable of conceiving either why
this division should cease or how it could go
on ad infinitum. It is nothing, in fact, but the
ordinary condition of useful action, unsuitably
transported into the domain of pure know
ledge. We shall never explain by means of
CHAP, iv PERCEPTION AND MATTER 263
particles, whatever these may be, the simple pro
perties of matter : at most we can thus follow
out into corpuscles as artificial as the corpus
the body itself the actions and reactions of this
body with regard to all the others. This is pre
cisely the object of chemistry. It studies bodies
rather than matter ; and so we understand why
it stops at the atom, which is still endowed with
the general properties of matter. But the ma
teriality of the atom dissolves more and more
under the eyes of the physicist. We have no
reason, for instance, for representing the atom
to ourselves as a solid, rather than as liquid or
gaseous, nor for picturing the reciprocal action of
atoms by shocks rather than in any other way.
Why do we think of a solid atom, and why of
shocks ? Because solids, being the bodies on
which we clearly have the most hold, are those
which interest us most in our relations with the
external world ; and because contact is the only
means which appears to be at our disposal in
order to make our body act upon other bodies.
But very simple experiments show that there is
never true contact between two neighbouring
bodies l ; and besides, solidity is far from being
an absolutely defined state of matter. 8 Solidity
and shock borrow, then, their apparent clearness
1 See, on this subject, Clerk- Maxwell, Action at a Distance
(Scientific Papers, Cambridge, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 313-314).
z Clerk-Maxwell, Molecular Constitution of Bodies (Scientific
Papers, vol. ii, p. 618). Van der Waals has shown, on the
other hand, the continuity of liquid and gaseous states.
264 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rr
from the habits and necessities of practical life ;
images of this kind throw no light on the inner
nature of things.
Moreover, if there is a truth that science has
placed beyond dispute, it is that of the reciprocal
action of all parts of matter upon each other.
Between the supposed molecules of bodies the
forces of attraction and repulsion are at work.
The influence of gravitation extends throughout
interplanetary space. Something, then, exists be
tween the atoms. It will be said that this some
thing is no longer matter, but force. And we
shall be asked to picture to ourselves, stretched
between the atoms, threads which will be made
more and more tenuous, until they are invisi
ble and even, we are told, immaterial. But
what purpose can this crude image serve ?
The preservation of life no doubt requires that
we should distinguish, in our daily experience,
between passive things and actions effected by
these things in space. As it is useful to us to fix
the seat of the thing at the precise point where we
might touch it, its palpable outlines become for
us its real limit, and we then see in its action a
something, I know not what, which, being altogether
different, can part company with it. But since a
theory of matter is an attempt to find the reality
hidden beneath these customary images which- are
entirely relative to our needs, from these images
it must first of all set itself free. And, indeed, we
see force and matter drawing nearer together the
CHAP, nr PERCEPTION AND MATTER 265
more deeply the physicist has penetrated into their
effects. We see force more and more materialized,
the atom more and more idealized, the two terms
converging towards a common limit and the uni
verse thus recovering its continuity. We may still
speak of atoms ; the atom may even retain its
individuality for our mind which isolates it ; but
the solidity and the inertia of the atom dissolve
either into movements or into lines of force whose
reciprocal solidarity brings back to us universal
continuity. To this conclusion were bound to
come, though they started from very different
positions, the two physicists of the last century
who have most closely investigated the consti
tution of matter, Lord Kelvin and Faraday.
For Faraday the atom is a centre of force. He
means by this that the individuality of the atom
consists in the mathematical point at which cross,
radiating throughout space, the indefinite lines
of force which really constitute it : thus each
atom occupies the whole space to which gravita
tion extends and all atoms are interpenetrating. 1
Lord Kelvin, moving in another order of ideas,
supposes a perfect, continuous, homogeneous and
incompressible fluid, filling space : what we term
an atom he makes into a vortex ring, ever whirl
ing in this continuity, and owing its properties to
its circular form, its existence and consequently
1 Faraday, A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction
(Philos. Magazine, 3rd series, vol. xxiv).
266 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
its individuality to its motion. 1 But on either
hypothesis, the nearer we draw to the ultimate
elements of matter the better we note the van
ishing of thkt discontinuity which our senses per
ceived oifcthe surface. Psychological analysis has
already /revealed to us that this discontinuity
is relative to our needs : every philosophy of
nature ends by finding it incompatible with the
general properties of matter.
In truth, vortices and lines of force are never,
to the mind of the physicist, more than convenient
figures for illustrating his calculations. But philo
sophy is bound to ask why these symbols are more
convenient than others, and why they permit of
further advance. Could we, working with them,
get back to experience, if the notions to which
they correspond did not at least point out the
direction in which we may seek for a representa
tion of the real ? Now the direction which they
indicate is obvious ; they show us, pervading
concrete extensity, modifications, perturbations,
changes of tension or of energy, and nothing else.
It is by this, above all, that they tend to unite
with the purely psychological analysis of motion
which we considered to begin with, an analysis
which presented it to us not as a mere change of
relation between objects to which it was, as it
1 Thomson, On Vortex Atoms (Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of
Edin., 1867). An hypothesis of the same nature had been
put forward by Graham, On the Molecular Mobility of Gases
(Proc. of the Roy. Soc., 1863, p. 621 et seq.).
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 267
were, an accidental addition, but as a true and,
in some sort, an independent, reality. Neither
science nor consciousness, then, is opposed to
this last proposition :
IV. Real movement is rather the transference of
a state than of a thing.
By formulating these four propositions, we
have, in reality, only been progressively narrowing
the interval between the two terms
So we shall ,.,... -, ,
see real which it IS USUal to ODDOSC to each
movement as .
rather other, qualities or sensations, and
quality than
quantity, movements. At first sight, the distance
and, as such, . .
akin to appears impassable. Qualities are
consciousness. rf **
heterogeneous, movements homogene
ous. Sensations, essentially indivisible, escape
measurement ; movements, always divisible, are
distinguished by calculable differences of direction
and velocity. We are fain to put qualities, in the
form of sensations, in consciousness ; while move
ments are supposed to take place independently
of us in space. These movements, compounded
together, we confess, will never yield anything
but movements ; our consciousness, though in
capable of coming into touch with them, yet by a
mysterious process is said to translate them into
sensations, which afterwards project themselves
into space and come to overlie, we know not how,
the movements they translate. Hence two differ
ent worlds, incapable of communicating otherwise
than by a miracle, on the one hand that of motion
268 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
in space, on the other that of consciousness with
sensations. Now, certainly the difference is irre
ducible (as we have shown in an earlier work *)
between quality on the one hand and pure quan
tity on the other. But this is just the question :
do real movements present merely differences of
quantity, or are they not quality itself, vibra
ting, so to speak, internally, and beating time
for its own existence through an often incal
culable number of moments ? Motion, as studied
in mechanics, is but an abstraction or a sym
bol, a common measure, a common denomina
tor, permitting the comparison of all real move
ments with each other ; but these movements,
regarded in themselves, are indivisibles which
occupy duration, involve a before and an after,
and link together the successive moments of time
by a thread of variable quality which cannot be
without some likeness to the continuity of our
own consciousness. May we not conceive, for
instance, that the irreducibility of two perceived
colours is due mainly to the narrow duration into
which are contracted the billions of vibrations
which they execute in one of our moments ? If
we could stretch out this duration, that is to say,
live it at a slower rhythm, should we not, as the
rhythm slowed down, see these colours pale and
lengthen into successive impressions, still coloured,
no doubt, but nearer and nearer to coincidence
1 H. Bergson, Time and Free Will. Sonnenschein & Co.
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 269
with pure vibrations ? In cases where the rhythm
of the movement is slow enough to tally with
the habits of our consciousness, as in the case of
the deep notes of the musical scale, for instance,
do we not feel that the quality perceived analyses
itself into repeated and successive vibrations,
bound together by an inner continuity ? That
which usually hinders this mutual approach of
motion and quality is the acquired habit of attach
ing movement to elements atoms or what not,
which interpose their solidity between the move
ment itself and the quality into which it contracts.
As our daily experience shows us bodies in motion,
it appears to us that there ought to be, in order
to sustain the elementary movements to which
qualities may be reduced, diminutive bodies or
corpuscles. Motion becomes then for our imagin
ation no more than an accident, a series of posi
tions, a change of relations ; and, as it is a law
of our representation that in it the stable drives
away the unstable, the important and central
element for us becomes the atom, between the
successive positions of which movement then be
comes a mere Hnk. But not only has this concep
tion the inconvenience of merely carrying over to
the atom all the problems raised by matter ; not only
does it wrongly set up as an absolute that division
of matter which, in our view, is hardly anything
but an outward projection of human needs ; it
also renders unintelligible the process by which we
grasp, in perception, at one and the same time, a
27O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rv
state of our consciousness and a reality independent
of ourselves. This mixed character of our imme
diate perception, this appearance of a realized
contradiction, is the principal theoretical reason
that we have for believing in an external world
which does not coincide absolutely with our per
ception. As it is overlooked in the doctrine that
regards sensation as entirely heterogeneous with
movements, of which sensation is then supposed
to be only a translation into the language of
consciousness, this doctrine ought, it would seem,
to confine itself to sensations, which it had indeed
begun by setting up as the actual data, and
not add to them movements which, having no
possible contact with them, are no longer any
thing but their useless duplicate. Realism, so
understood, is self-destructive. Indeed, we have
no choice : if our belief in a more or less homo
geneous substratum of sensible qualities has any
ground, this can only be found in an act which
makes us seize or divine, in quality itself, some
thing which goes beyond sensation, as if this sensa
tion itself were pregnant with details suspected yet
unperceived. Its objectivity that is to say, what
it contains over and above what it yields up-
must then consist, as we have foreshadowed, pre
cisely in the immense multiplicity of the move
ments which it executes, so to speak, within itself
as a chrysalis. Motionless on the surface, in its
very depth it lives and vibrates.
As a matter of fact, no one represents to himself
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 271
the relation between quantity and quality in any
whilst in other way. To believe in realities, dis-
tinct from that which is perceived, is
above all to recognize that the order
f our perceptions depends on them
an( ^ no * on US - There must be, then,
within the perceptions which fill a
ou?own f given moment, the reason of what will
duration. happen in the following moment. And
mechanism only formulates this belief with more
precision when it affirms that the states of matter
can be deduced one from the other. It is true
that this deduction is possible only if we discover,
beneath the apparent heterogeneity of sensible
qualities, homogeneous elements which lend them
selves to calculation. But, on the other hand, if
these elements are external to the qualities of
which they are meant to explain the regular
order, they can no longer render the service de
manded of them, because then the qualities must
be supposed to come to overlie them by a kind of
miracle, and cannot correspond to them unless we
bring in some pre-established harmony. So, do
what we will, we cannot avoid placing those
movements within these qualities, in the form of
internal vibrations, and then considering the vibra
tions as less homogeneous, and the qualities as
less heterogeneous, than they appear, and lastly
attributing the difference of aspect in the two
terms to the necessity which lies upon what may
be called an endless multiplicity of contracting
272 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
into a duration too narrow to permit of the
separation of its moments.
We must insist on this last point, to which we
have already alluded elsewhere, and which we
Thr may regard as essential. The duration lived
by our consciousness is a duration with
*ts own [determined rhythm, a duration
very different from the time of the phy-
nw. sicist, which can store up, in a given in
terval, as great a number of phenomena as we
please. In the space of a second, red light,
the light which has the longest wave-length,
and of which, consequently, the vibrations are
the least frequent accomplishes 400 billions of
successive vibrations. If we would form some
idea of this number, we should have to separ
ate the vibrations sufficiently to allow our con
sciousness to count them, or at least to record
explicitly their succession ; and we should then
have to enquire how many days or months or
years this succession would occupy. Now the
smallest interval of empty time which we can
detect equals, according to Exner, ^ of a second ;
and it is even doubtful whether we can per
ceive in succession several intervals as short as
this. Let us admit, however, that we can go on
doing so indefinitely. Let us imagine, in a word,
a consciousness which should watch the succession
of 400 billions of vibrations, each instantaneous,
and each separated from the next only by the
sfa of a second necessary to distinguish them.
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 273
A very simple calculation shows that more than
25,000 years would elapse before the conclusion
of the operation. Thus the sensation of red light,
experienced by us in the course of a second, cor
responds in itself to a succession of phenomena
which, separately distinguished in our duration
with the greatest possible economy of time, would
occupy more than 250 centuries of our history.
Is this conceivable ? We must distinguish here
between our own duration and time in general.
In our duration, the duration which our con
sciousness perceives, a given interval can only
contain a limited number of phenomena of which
we are aware. Do we conceive that this content
can increase ; and when we speak of an infi
nitely divisible time, is it our own duration that
we are thinking of ?
As long as we are dealing with space, we may
carry the division as far as we please ; we change
in no way, thereby, the nature of what is divided.
This is because space, by definition, is outside us ;
it is because a part of space appears to us to sub
sist even when we cease to be concerned with it ;
so that, even when we leave it undivided, we know
that it can wait, and that a new effort of our
imagination may decompose it when we choose.
As, moreover, it never ceases to be space, it always
implies juxtaposition and consequently possible
division. Abstract space is, indeed, at bottom, no
thing but the mental diagram of infinite divisibility.
But with duration it is quite otherwise. The parts of
274 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
our duration are one with the successive moments of
the act which divides it ; if we distinguish in it so
many instants, so many parts it indeed possesses ;
and if our consciousness can only distinguish in a
given interval a definite number of elementary
acts, if it terminates the division at a given
point, there also terminates the divisibility. In
vain does our imagination endeavour to go on, to
carry division further still, and to quicken, so to
speak, the circulation of our inner phenomena :
the very effort by which we are trying to effect
this further division of our duration lengthens
that duration by just so much. And yet we
know that millions of phenomena succeed each
other while we hardly succeed in counting a few.
We know this not from physics alone ; the crude
experience of the senses allows us to divine it ;
we are dimly aware of successions in nature
much more rapid than those of our internal states.
How are we to conceive them, and what is this
duration of which the capacity goes beyond all
our imagination ?
It is not ours, assuredly ; but neither is it that
homogeneous and impersonal duration, the same
for everything and for every one, which flows
onward, indifferent and void, external to all that
endures. This imaginary homogeneous time is,
as we have endeavoured to show elsewhere, 1 an
idol of language, a fiction of which the origin is
1 H. i^ergson, Time and Free Will. Sonnenschein & Co.
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 275
easy to discover. In reality there is no one
rhythm of duration ; it is possible to imagine
many different rhythms which, slower or faster,
measure the degree of tension or relaxation of
different kinds of consciousness, and thereby fix
their respective places in the scale of being. To
conceive of durations of different tensions is per
haps both difficult and strange to our mind, be
cause we have acquired the useful habit of sub
stituting for the true duration, lived by conscious
ness, an homogeneous and independent Time ;
but, in the first place, it is easy, as we have shown,
to detect the illusion which renders such a
thought foreign to us, and, secondly, this idea
has in its favour, at bottom, the tacit agreement
of our consciousness. Do we not sometimes per
ceive in ourselves, in sleep, two contemporaneous
and distinct persons of whom one sleeps a few
minutes, while the other s dream fills days and
weeks ? And would not the whole of history be
contained in a very short time for a conscious
ness at a higher degree of tension than our own,
which should watch the development of human
ity while contracting it, so to speak, into the
great phases of its evolution ? In short, then,
to perceive consists in condensing enormous
periods of an infinitely diluted existence into a
few more differentiated moments of an intenser
life, and in thus summing up a very long history.
To perceive means to immobilize.
To say this is to say that we seize, in the
276 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
act of perception, something which outruns per-
Om ception itself, although the material
ness sc sums"up universe is not essentially different or
5ho?e periods distinct from the representation which
we have of it. In one sense, my per-
ception is indeed truly within me, since
it contracts into a single moment of my duration
that which, taken in itself, spreads over an
incalculable number of moments. But, if you
abolish my consciousness, the material universe
subsists exactly as it was ; only, since you have
removed that particular rhythm of duration
which was the condition of my action upon things,
these things draw back into themselves, mark
as many moments in their own existence as science
distinguishes in it ; and sensible qualities, with
out vanishing, are spread and diluted in an in
comparably more divided duration. Matter thus
resolves itself into numberless vibrations, all
linked together in uninterrupted continuity, all
bound up with each other, and travelling in every
direction like shivers through an immense body.
In short, try first to connect together the dis
continuous objects of daily experience ; then
resolve the motionless continuity of their qualities
into vibrations on the spot ; finally fix your at
tention on these movements, by abstracting from
the divisible space which underlies them and
considering only their mobility (that undivided
act which our consciousness becomes aware of
in our own movements) : you will thus obtain a
CHAP, iv DURATION AND TENSION 277
vision of matter, fatiguing perhaps for your ima
gination, but pure, and freed from all that the
exigencies of life compel you to add to it in
external perception. Now bring back conscious
ness, and with it the exigencies of life : at long,
very long, intervals, and by as many leaps over
enormous periods of the inner history of things,
quasi-instantaneous views will be taken, views
which this time are bound to be pictorial, and
of which the more vivid colours will condense an
infinity of elementary repetitions and changes.
In just the same way the multitudinous successive
positions of a runner are contracted into a single
symbolic attitude, which our eyes perceive, which
art reproduces, and which becomes for us all the
image of a man running. The glance which falls
at any moment on the things about us only takes
in the effects of a multiplicity of inner repetitions
and evolutions, effects which are, for that very
reason, discontinuous, and into which we bring
back continuity by the relative movements that
we attribute to objects in space. The change
is everywhere, but inward ; we localize it here
and there, but outwardly ; and thus we consti
tute bodies which are both stable as to their
qualities and mobile as to their positions, a mere
change of place summing up in itself, to our
eyes, the universal transformation.
That there are, in a sense, multiple objects, that
one man is distinct from another man, tree
from tree, stone from stone, is an indisputable
278 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. iv.
fact ; for each of these beings, each of these
Necessity things, has characteristic properties and
beni d that ea obeys a determined law of evolution,
therbythm oi But * ne separation between a thing and
$ e maTtn" n its environment cannot be absolutely
fh y atduSon g definite and clear cut ; there is a passage
JcJSiSr it b y insensible gradations from the one to
necessity, trig other : the close solidarity which binds
all the obj ects of the material universe, the perpetu
ity of their reciprocal actions and reactions, is suffi
cient to prove that they have not the precise
limits which we attribute to them. Our per
ception outlines, so to speak, the form of their
nucleus ; it terminates them at the point where
our possible action upon them ceases, where,
consequently, they cease to interest our needs.
Such is the primary and the most apparent opera
tion of the perceiving mind : it marks out divi
sions in the continuity of the extended, simply
following the suggestions of our requirement and
the needs of practical life. But, in order to divide
the real in this manner, we must first persuade
ourselves that the real is divisible at will. Conse
quently we must throw beneath the continuity
of sensible qualities, that is to say, beneath con
crete extensity, a network, of which the meshes
may be altered to any shape whatsoever and
become as small as we please : this substra
tum which is merely conceived, this wholly
ideal diagram of arbitrary and infinite divisi
bility, is homogeneous space. Now, at the same
CHAP, iv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 279
time that our actual and so to speak instan
taneous perception effects this division of matter
into independent objects, our memory solidifies
into sensible qualities the continuous flow of
things. It prolongs the past into the present,
because our action will dispose of the future in
the exact proportion in which our perception,
enlarged by memory, has contracted the past.
To reply, to an action received, by an immediate
reaction which adopts the rhythm of the first
and continues it in the same duration, to be in
the present and in a present which is always
beginning again, this is the fundamental law of
matter : herein consists necessity. If there are
actions that are really free, or at least partly in
determinate, they can only belong to beings able
to fix, at long intervals, that becoming to which
their own becoming clings, able to solidify it into
distinct moments, and so to condense matter and,
by assimilating it, to digest it into movements
of reaction which will pass through the meshes
of natural necessity. The greater or less ten
sion of their duration, which expresses, at bottom,
their greater or less intensity of life, thus deter
mines both the degree of the concentrating power
of their perception and the measure of their liberty.
The independence of their action upon surround
ing matter becomes more and more assured in the
degree that they free themselves from the par
ticular rhythm which governs the flow of this
matter. So that sensible qualities, as they are
280 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, rv
found in our memory-shot perception, are in
fact the successive moments obtained by a solidi
fication of the real. But, in order to distinguish
these moments, and also to bind them together
by a thread which shall be common alike to our
own existence and to that of things, we are bound
to imagine a diagrammatic design of succes
sion in general, an homogeneous and indifferent
medium, which is to the flow of matter in the
sense of length as space is to it in the sense of
breadth : herein consists homogeneous time.
Homogeneous space and homogeneous time
are then neither properties of things nor essential
Homogeneous COnditi nS f OUr faulty of knowing
t?me e are d the tnem : they express, in an abstract
form > the double work of solidification
and of division which we effect on
propertfes not ^ ne mov i n g continuity of the real in
of things. order to obtain there a fulcrum for our
action, in order to fix within it starting-points
for our operation, in short, to introduce into
it real changes. They are the diagrammatic
design of our eventual action upon matter.
The first mistake, that which consists in viewing
this homogeneous time and space as properties of
things, leads to the insurmountable difficulties
of metaphysical dogmatism, whether mechan
istic or dynamistic, dynamism erecting into
so many absolutes the successive cross-cuts
which we make in the course of the universe
as it flows along, and then endeavouring vainly
CHAP; iv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 28 1
to bind them together by a kind of qualitative
deduction ; mechanism attaching itself rather, in
any one of these cross-cuts, to the divisions made
in its breadth, that is to say, to instantaneous
differences in magnitude and position, and striv
ing no less vainly to produce, by the variation of
these differences, the succession of sensible qualities.
Shall we then seek refuge in the other hypothesis,
and maintain, with Kant, that space and time are
forms of our sensibility ? If we do, we shall have
to look upon matter and spirit as equally unknow
able. Now, if we compare these two hypotheses,
we discover in them a common basis : by setting
up homogeneous time and homogeneous space
either as realities that are contemplated or as forms
of contemplation, they both attribute to space
and time an interest which is speculative rather
than vital. Hence there is room, between meta
physical dogmatism on the one hand and critical
philosophy on the other, for a doctrine which
regards homogeneous space and time as princi
ples of division and of solidification introduced
into the real with a view to action and not with a
view to knowledge, which attributes to things a
real duration and a real extensity, and which,
in the end, sees the source of all difficulty no
longer in that duration and in that extensity
(which really belong to things and are directly
manifest to the mind), but in the homogeneous
space and time which we stretch out beneath
them in order to divide the continuous, to fix the
282 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
becoming, and provide our activity with points
to which it can be applied.
But erroneous conceptions about sensible quality
and about space are so deeply rooted in the mind
that it is important to attack them
Qualities of , j TTT J.T.
different from every side. We may say then,
in extensity, to reveal yet another aspect, that they
though In . J . J ,
different imply this double postulate, accepted
equally by realism and by idealism :
first, that between different kinds of qualities there
is nothing common ; second, that neither is there
anything common between extensity and pure
quality. We maintain, on the contrary, that
there is something common between qualities of
different orders, that they all share in extensity,
though in different degrees, and that it is im
possible to overlook these two truths without
entangling in a thousand difficulties the meta-
physic of matter, the .psychology of perception
and, more generally, the problem of the relation
of consciousness with matter. Without insisting
on these consequences, let us content ourselves
for the moment with showing, at the bottom of
the various theories of matter, the two postulates
which we dispute and the illusion from which
they proceed.
The essence of English idealism is to regard
extensity as a property of tactile perceptions.
As it sees nothing in sensible qualities but sen
sations, and in sensations themselves nothing but
mental states, it finds in the different qualities
CHAP, rv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 283
nothing on which to base the parallelism of
idealism and their phenomena. It is therefore con-
regard the strained to account for this parallelism
orders of by a habit which makes the actual per-
sensation as . . . , .
discontinuous, ceptions of sight, lor instance, suggest
and so miss ~ . 0<:>
the true to us potential sensations of touch. If
nature of . , ..
perception, the impressions of two different senses
resemble each other no more than the words
of two languages, we shall seek in vain to de
duce the data of the one from the data of the
other. They have no common element ; and
consequently, there is nothing common between
extensity, which is always tactile, and the data
of the senses other than that of touch, which
must then be supposed to be in no way extended.
But neither can atomistic realism, which locates
movements in space and sensations in conscious
ness, discover anything in common between the
modifications or phenomena of extensity and the
sensations which correspond to them. Sensations
are supposed to issue from the modifications as
a kind of phosphorescence, or, again, to translate
into the language of the soul the manifestations
of matter ; but in neither case do they re
flect, we are told, the image of their causes. No
doubt they may all be traced to a common origin,
which is movement in space ; but, just because
they develop outside of space, they must forego,
qua sensations, the kinship which binds their
causes together. In breaking with space they
break also their connexion with each other ; they
284 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, nr
have nothing in common between them, nor with
extensity.
Idealism and realism, then, only differ in that
the first relegates extensity to tactile perception,
of which it becomes the exclusive property,
while the second thrusts extensity yet further
back, outside of all perception. But the two
doctrines are agreed in maintaining the discon
tinuity of the different orders of sensible qualities,
and also the abrupt transition from that which
is purely extended to that which is not extended
at all. Now the principal difficulties which they
both encounter in the theory of perception arise
from this common postulate.
For suppose, to begin with, as Berkeley did,
that all perception of extensity is to be referred
to the sense of touch. We may, indeed, if you
will have it so, deny extension to the data of
hearing, smell and taste ; but we must at least
explain the genesis of a visual space that corre
sponds to tactile space. It is alleged, indeed, that
sight ends by becoming symbolic of touch, and
that there is nothing more in the visual per
ception of the order of things in space than a
suggestion of tactile perception. But we fail to
understand how the visual perception of relief, for
instance, a perception which makes upon us an
impress sui generis, and indeed indescribable,
could ever be one with the mere remembrance of
a sensation of touch. The association of a mem
ory with a present perception may complicate
CHAP, iv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 285
this perception by enriching it with an element
already known, but it cannot create a new kind
of impress, a new quality of perception : now
the visual perception of relief presents an abso
lutely original character. It may be urged that
it is possible to give the illusion of relief with a
plane surface. This only proves that a surface,
on which the play of light and shadow on an
object in relief is more or less well imitated, is
enough to remind us of relief ; but how could
we be reminded of relief if relief had not been,
at first, actually perceived? We have already
said, but we cannot repeat too often, that our
theories of perception are entirely vitiated by
the idea that if a certain arrangement produces,
at a given moment, the illusion of a certain
perception, it must always have been able to
produce the perception itself ; as if the very-
function of memory were not to make the
complexity of the effect survive the simplifica
tion of the cause ! Again, it may be urged that
the retina itself is a plane surface, and that if we
perceive by sight something that is extended, it
can only be the image on the retina. But is it
not true, as we have shown at the beginning of
this book, that in the visual perception of an
object the brain, nerves, retina and the object
itself form a connected whole, a continuous
process in which the image on the retina is only
an episode ? By what right, then, do we isolate
this image to sum up in it the whole of percep-
286 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
tion ? And then, as we have also shown, 1
how could a surface be perceived as a surface
otherwise than ,in a space that has recovered
its three dimensions ? Berkeley, at least, carried
out his theory to its conclusion ; he denied to
sight any perception of extensity. But the ob
jections which we raised only acquire the more
force from this, since it is impossible to understand
the spontaneous creation, by a mere association
of memories, of all that is original in our visual
perceptions of line, surface and volume, per
ceptions so distinct that the mathematician does
not go beyond them and works with a space
that is purely visual. But we will not insist on
these various points, nor on the disputable argu
ments drawn from the observation of those, born
blind, whose sight has been surgically restored :
the theory of the acquired perceptions of sight,
classical since Berkeley s day, does not seem likely
to resist the multiplied attacks of contemporary
psychology. 2 Passing over the difficulties of a
psychological order, we will content ourselves
with drawing attention to another point, in our
opinion essential. Suppose for a moment that
1 Time and Free Will. Sonnenschein & Co., 1910.
8 See on this subject : Paul Janet, La perception visuelle
de la distance, Revue philosophique, 1879, vol. vii, p. I et seq.
William James, Principles of Psychology, vol.ii, chap. xxii.
Cf. on the subject of the visual perception of extensity :
Dunan, L espace visuel et I espace tactile (Revue philosophique,
Feb. and Apr. 1888, Jan. 1889).
CHAP iv. EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 287
the eye does not, at the outset, give us any informa
tion as to any of the relations of space. Visual
form, visual relief, visual distance, then become
the symbols of tactile perceptions. But how
is it, then, that this symbolism succeeds ? Here
are objects which change their shape and move.
Vision takes note of definite changes which
touch afterwards verifies. There is, then, in the
two series, visual and tactile, or in their causes,
something which makes them correspond one
to another and ensures the constancy of their
parallelism. What is the principle of this con
nexion ?
For English idealism, it can only be some deus
ex machina, and we are confronted with a mys
tery again. For ordinary realism, it is in a space
distinct from the sensations themselves that the
principle of the correspondence of sensations
one with another lies; but this doctrine only
throws the difficulty further back and even
aggravates it, for we shall now want to know
how a system of homogeneous movements
in space evokes various sensations which have
no resemblance whatever with them. Just now
the genesis of visual perception of space by a
mere association of images appeared to us to
imply a real creation ex nihilo ; here all the sen
sations are born of nothing, or at least have no
resemblance with the movement that occasions
them. In the main, this second theory differs
much less from the first than is commonly believed.
288 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
Amorphous space, atoms jostling against each
other, are only our tactile perceptions made ob
jective, set apart from all our other perceptions
on account of the special importance which we
attribute to them, and made into independent
realities, thus contrasting with the other sensa
tions which are then supposed to be only the
symbols of these. Indeed, in the course of this
operation, we have emptied these tactile sensa
tions of a part of their content ; after having
reduced all other senses to being mere appen
dages of the sense of touch, touch itself we mu
tilate, leaving out everything in it that is not
a mere abstract or diagrammatic design of tac
tile perception : with this design we then go
on to construct the external world. Can we
wonder that between this abstraction on the one
hand, and sensations on the other, no possible
link is to be found ? But the truth is that
space is no more without us than within us,
and that it does not belong to a privileged
group of sensations. All sensations partake of
extensity ; all are more or less deeply rooted in it ;
and the difficulties of ordinary realism arise from
the fact that, the kinship of the sensations one
with another having been extracted and placed
apart under the form of an indefinite and empty
space, we no longer see either how these sensations
can partake of extensity or how they can corre
spond with each other.
Contemporary psychology is more and more
CHAP, iv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION 289
impressed with the idea that all our sensations
But modem are in some degree extensive. It is
psychology . . , . ,
has a tendency maintained, not without an appearance
to regard all . , .
sensation as of reason, that there is no sensation
extensive. without cxtensity l or without a feel
ing of volume. 2 English idealism sought to
reserve to tactile perception a monopoly of the
extended, the other senses dealing with space only
in so far as they remind us of the data of touch.
A more attentive psychology reveals to us, on
the contrary, and no doubt will hereafter reveal
still more clearly, the need of regarding all sensa
tions as primarily extensive, their extensity fading
and disappearing before the higher intensity and
usefulness of tactile, and also, no doubt, of visual,
extensity.
So understood, space is indeed the symbol
of fixity and of infinite divisibility. Concrete
we invert extensity, that is to say the diversity of
wewlaSSst sensible qualities, is not within space ;
interior*"! rather is it space that we thrust into
S?he neoe extensity . Space is not a ground on which
St to tece " rea l motion is posited ; rather is it real
movements. mo ti O n that deposits space beneath it
self. But our imagination, which is preoccu-
1 Ward, Article Psychology in the Encycl. Britannica.
2 W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 134 et seq.
We may note in passing that we might, in strictness, attribute
this opinion to Kant, since The Transcendental /Esthetic allows
no difference between the data of the different senses as far
as their extension in space is concerned. But it must not be
forgotten that the point of view of the Critique is other than
u
29O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
pied above all by the convenience of expression
and the exigencies of material life, prefers to
invert the natural order of the terms. Accus
tomed to seek its fulcrum in a world of ready-
made motionless images, of which the apparent
fixity is hardly anything else but the outward
reflexion of the stability of our lower needs, it
cannot help believing that rest is anterior to
motion, cannot avoid taking rest as its point
of reference and its abiding place, so that it
comes to see movement as only a variation of
distance, space being thus supposed to precede
motion. Then, in a space which is homo
geneous and infinitely divisible, we draw, in
imagination, a trajectory and fix positions : after
wards, applying the movement to the trajectory,
we see it divisible like the line we have drawn,
and equally denuded of quality. Can we wonder
that our understanding, working thenceforward
on this idea, which represents precisely the reverse
of the truth, discovers in it nothing but contra
dictions ? Having assimilated movements to space,
we find these movements homogeneous like space ;
and since we no longer see in them anything but
calculable differences of direction and velocity, all
relation between movement and quality is for us
destroyed. So that all we have to do is to shut up
motion in space, qualities in consciousness, and
that of psychology, and that it is enough for its purpose that
all our sensations should end by being localized in space
when perception has reached its final form.
CHAP, iv EXTENSITY AND EXTENSION
to establish between these two parallel series,
incapable, by hypothesis, of ever meeting, a
mysterious correspondence. Thrown back into
consciousness, sensible qualities become incap
able of recovering extensity. , Relegated to space,
and indeed to abstract space, where there is
never but a single instant and where everything
is always being born anew movement aban
dons that solidarity of the present with the past
which is its very essence. And as these two
aspects of perception, quality and movement,
have been made equally obscure, the phenomenon
of perception, in which a consciousness, assumed
to be shut up in itself and foreign to space, is
supposed to translate what occurs in space, be
comes a mystery. But let us, on the contrary,
banish all preconceived idea of interpreting or
measuring, let us place ourselves face to face
with immediate reality: at once we find that
there is no impassable barrier, no essential differ
ence, no real distinction even, between percep
tion and the thing perceived, between quality
and movement.
So we return, by a round-about way, to the
conclusions worked out in the first chapter of
this book. Our perception, we said, is originally
in things rather than in the mind, without us
rather than within. The several kinds of percep
tion correspond to so many directions actually
marked out in reality. But, we added, this
theTr
MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
perception, which coincides with its object, exists
rather in theory than in fact : it could only
happen if we were shut up within the present
moment. In concrete perception memory inter
venes, and the subjectivity of sensible qualities
is due precisely to the fact that our consciousness,
which begins by being only memory, prolongs a
plurality of moments into each other, contract
ing them into a single intuition.
Consciousness and matter, body and soul, were
thus seen to meet each other in perception. But
Perception m one as P ec t this idea remained for us
obscure, because our perception, and con-
sequently also our consciousness, seemed
of tnus to snare m the divisibility which is
action. attributed to matter. If, on the dualis-
tic hypothesis, we naturally shrink from accepting
the partial coincidence of the perceived object
and the perceiving subject, it is because we are
conscious of the undivided unity of our percep
tion, whereas the object appears to us to be,
in essence, infinitely divisible. Hence the hypo
thesis of a consciousness with inextensive sensa
tions, placed over against an extended multiplicity.
But if the divisibility of matter is entirely relative
to our action thereon, that is to say to our faculty
of modifying its aspect, if it belongs not to
matter itself but to the space which we throw
beneath this matter in order to bring it within
our grasp, then the difficulty disappears. Ex
tended matter, regarded as a whole, is like a
CHAP, iv SOUL AND BODY
consciousness where everything balances and
compensates and neutralizes everything else ;
it possesses in very truth the indivisibility of our
perception ; so that, inversely, we may without
scruple attribute to perception something of the
extensity of matter. These two terms, perception
and matter, approach each other in the measure
that we divest ourselves of what may be called
the prejudices of action : sensation recovers ex-
tensity, the concrete extended recovers its natural
continuity and indivisibility.. And homogeneous
space, which stood between the two terms like an
insurmountable barrier, is then seen to have no
other reality than that of a diagram or a symbol.
It interests the behaviour of a being which acts upon
matter, but not the work of a mind which specu
lates on its essence.
Thereby also some light may be thrown
upon the problem towards which all our en-
ordinary quiries converge, that of the union of
body and soul. The obscurity of this
problem, on the dualistic hypothesis,
comes from the double fact that matter
i s considered as essentially divisible and
every state of the soul as rigorously in-
thcm. extensive, so that from the outset the
communication between the two terms is severed.
And when we go more deeply into this double
postulate, we discover, in regard to matter, a
confusion of concrete and indivisible extensity
with the divisible space which underlies it ; and
294 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
also, in regard to mind, the illusory idea that there
are no degrees, no possible transition, between
the extended and the unextended. But if these
two postulates involve a common error, if there
is a gradual passage from the idea to the image
and from the image to the sensation ; if, in the
measure in which it evolves towards actuality,
that is to say towards action, the mental state
draws nearer to extension ; if, finally, this
extension once attained remains undivided and
therefore is not out of harmony with the unity of
the soul ; we can understand that spirit can
rest upon matter and consequently unite with
it in the act of pure perception, yet nevertheless
be radically distinct from it. It is distinct from
matter in that it is, even then, memory, that is to
say a synthesis of past and present with a view
to the future, in that it contracts the moments of
this matter in order to use them and to manifest
itself by actions which are the final aim of its
union with the body. We were right, then, when
we said, at the beginning of this book, that the
distinction between body and mind must be estab
lished in terms not of space but of time.
The mistake of ordinary dualism is that it
starts from the spatial point of view : it puts on
the one hand matter with its modifications in
space, on the other unextended sensations in con
sciousness. Hence the impossibility of under
standing how the spirit acts upon the body or the
body upon spirit. Hence hypotheses which are
CHAP, iv SOUL AND BODY
andean be nothing but disguised statements of the
fact, the idea of a parallelism or of a pre-estab
lished harmony. But hence also the impossibility
of constituting either a psychology of memory or
a metaphysic of matter. We have striven to show
that this psychology and this metaphysic are
bound up with each other, and that the difficul
ties are less formidable in a dualism which, starting
from pure perception, where subject and object
coincide, follows the development of the two terms
in their respective durations, matter, the further
we push its analysis, tending more and more to be
only a succession of infinitely rapid moments which
may be deduced each from the other and thereby are
equivalent to each other spirit being in perception
already memory, and declaring itself more and
more as a prolonging of the past into the present,
a progress, a true evolution.
But does the relation of body and mind become
thereby clearer ? We substitute a temporal for
But the dis- a spatial distinction : are the two terms
tween md an Y the more able to unite ? It must be
oum a b t e er observed that the first distinction does
ofo e i S^eT not admit of degree : matter is supposed
to be in space, spirit to be extra-
spatial; there is no possible transition
degrees. between them. But if, in fact, the
humblest function of spirit is to bind together
the successive moments of the duration of
things, if it is by this that it comes into con
tact with matter and by this also that it is first
296 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
of all distinguished from matter, we can con
ceive an infinite number of degrees between matter
and fully developed spirit a spirit capable of
action which is not only undetermined, but
also reasonable and reflective. Each of these suc
cessive degrees, which measures a growing inten
sity of life, corresponds to a higher tension of dura
tion and is made manifest externally by a greater
development of the sensori-motor system. But
let us consider this nervous system itself : we note
that its increasing complexity appears to allow an
ever greater latitude to the activity of the living
being, the faculty of waiting before reacting, and
of putting the excitation received into relation
with an ever richer variety of motor mechanisms.
Yet this is only the outward aspect ; and the more
complex organization of the nervous system, which
seems to assure the greater independence of the
living being in regard to matter, is only the
material symbol of that independence itself, that
is to say of the inner energy which allows the
being to free itself from the rhythm of the flow
of things, and to retain in an ever higher degree the
past in order to influence ever more deeply the
future, the symbol, in the special sense which
we give to the word, of its memory. Thus,
between brute matter and the mind most cap
able of reflexion there are all possible intensities
of memory or, what comes to the same thing,
all the degrees of freedom. On the first hypo
thesis, that which expresses the distinction be-
CHAF. iv SOUL AND BODY
tween spirit and body in terms of space, body
and spirit are like two railway lines which cut
each other at a right angle ; on the second, the
rails come together in a curve, so that we pass
insensibly from the one to the other.
But have we here anything but a metaphor ?
Does not a marked distinction, an irreducible oppo
sition, remain between matter properly so-called
and the lowest degree of freedom or of memory ?
Yes, no doubt, the distinction subsists, but union
becomes possible, since it would be given, under
the radical form of a partial coincidence, in pure
perception. The difficulties of ordinary dualism
come, not from the distinction of the two terms,
but from the impossibility of seeing how the one
is grafted upon the other. Now, as we have
shown, pure perception, which is the lowest degree
of mind, mind without memory is really part
of matter, as we understand matter. We may
go further : memory does not intervene as a func
tion of which matter has no presentiment and
which it does not imitate in its own way. If
matter does not remember the past, it is because
it repeats the past unceasingly, because, subject
to necessity, it unfolds a series of moments of
which each is the equivalent of the preceding
moment and may be deduced from it : thus
its past is truly given in its present. But a
being which evolves more or less freely creates
something new every moment : in vain, then,
should we seek to read its past in its present
298 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, iv
unless its past were deposited within it in the form
of memory. Thus, to use again a metaphor
which has more than once appeared in this book,
it is necessary, and for similar reasons, that the
past should be acted by matter, imagined by mind.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
I. THE idea that we have disengaged from the
facts and confirmed by reasoning is that our body
The body an * s an instrument of action, and of action
S s So nt omv - I* 1 no degree, in no sense, under
only - no aspect, does it serve to prepare, far
less to explain, a representation. Consider ex
ternal perception : there is only a difference of
degree, not of kind, between the so-called percep
tive faculties of the brain and the reflex functions
of the spinal cord. While the spinal cord trans
forms the excitations received into movements
which are more or less necessarily executed, the
brain puts them into relation with motor mechan
isms which are more or less freely chosen ; but
that which the brain explains in our perception is
action begun, prepared or suggested, it is not
perception itself. Consider memory, the body
retains motor habits capable of acting the past
over again ; it can resume attitudes in which
the past will insert itself ; or, again, by the repeti
tion of certain cerebral phenomena which have
prolonged former perceptions, it can furnish to
remembrance a point of attachment with the
actual, a means of recovering its lost influence
upon present reality : but in no case can the brain
280
3<X> MATTER AND MEMORY
store up recollections or images. Thus, neither in
perception, nor in memory, nor a fortiori in the
higher attainments of mind, does the body con
tribute directly to representation. By develop
ing this hypothesis under its manifold aspects and
thus pushing dualism to an extreme, we appeared
to divide body and soul by an impassable abyss.
In truth, we were indicating the only possible
means of bringing them together.
II. All the difficulties raised by this problem,
either in ordinary dualism, or in materialism and
Perception idealism, come from considering, in the
Sie d p hySSaT phenomena of perception and memory,
menta! are the physical and the mental as duplicates
dSpiicJtw of the one of the other. Suppose I place
each other, myself at the materialist point of view
of the epiphenomenal consciousness : I am quite
unable to understand why certain cerebral pheno
mena are accompanied by consciousness, that is
to say, of what use could be, or how could ever
arise, the conscious repetition of the material uni
verse I have begun by positing. Suppose I
prefer idealism: I then allow myself only per
ceptions, and my body is one of them. But
whereas observation shows me that the images
I perceive are entirely changed by very slight
alterations of the image I call my body (since
I have only to shut my eyes and my visual
universe disappears), science assures me that
all phenomena must succeed and condition one
another according to a determined order, in which
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 301
effects are strictly proportioned to causes. I
am obliged, therefore, to seek, in the image which
I call my body, and which follows me everywhere,
for changes which shall be the equivalents but
the well-regulated equivalents, now deducible
from each other of the images which succeed
one another around my body : the cerebral
movements, to which I am led back in this
way, again are the duplicates of my percep
tions. It is true that these movements are
still perceptions, possible perceptions, so that
this second hypothesis is more intelligible than
the first ; but, on the other hand, it must sup
pose, in its turn, an inexplicable correspondence
between my real perception of things and my
possible perception of certain cerebral movements
which do not in any way resemble these things.
When we look at it closely, we shall see that this
is the reef upon which all idealism is wrecked :
there is no possible transition from the order
which is perceived by our senses to the order which
we are to conceive for the sake of our science,
or, if we are dealing more particularly with
the Kantian idealism, no possible transition from
sense to understanding. So my only refuge
seems to be ordinary dualism. I place matter
on this side, mind on that, and I suppose that
cerebral movements are the cause or the occasion
of my representation of objects. But if they
are its cause, if they are enough to produce it,
I must fall back, step by step, upon the material-
302 MATTER AND MEMORY
istic hypothesis of an epiphenomenal conscious
ness. If they are only its occasion, I thereby suppose
that they do not resemble it in any way, and so,
depriving matter of all the qualities which I con
ferred upon it in my representation, I come back
to idealism. Idealism and materialism are then
the two poles between which this kind of dualism
will always oscillate ; and when, in order to main
tain the duality of substances, it decides to make
them both of equal rank, it will be led to regard
them as two translations of one and the same
original, two parallel and predetermined develop
ments of a single principle, and thus to deny their
reciprocal influence, and, by an inevitable conse
quence, to sacrifice freedom.
Now, if we look beneath these three hypo
theses, we find that they have a common basis :
The mistake a ^ three regard the elementary opera-
SfleJ? that tions * the mind > perception and
SlaSenwrF memory, as operations of pure know-
knowiedge. ledge. What they place at the origin
j e to they * consc i usness is either the useless
action. duplicate of an external reality or
the inert material of an intellectual construction
entirely disinterested: but they always neglect
the relation of perception with action and of
memory with conduct. Now, it is no doubt pos
sible to conceive, as an ideal limit, a memory and
a perception that are disinterested ; but, in fact,
it is towards action that memory and perception
are turned ; it is action that the body pre-
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 303
pares. Do we consider perception ? The grow
ing complexity of the nervous system shunts
the excitation received on to an ever larger
variety of motor mechanisms, and so sketches
out simultaneously an ever larger number of
possible actions. Do we turn to memory ? We
note that its primary function is to evoke all
those past perceptions which are analogous
to the present perception, to recall to us what
preceded and followed them, and so to suggest
to us that decision which is the most useful.
But this is not all. By allowing us to grasp in a
single intuition multiple moments of duration, it
frees us from the movement of the flow of things,
that is to say, from the rhythm of necessity. The
more of these moments memory can contract into
one, the firmer is the hold which it gives to us on
matter : so that the memory of a living being
appears indeed to measure, above all, its powers of
action upon things, and to be only the intellectual
reverberation of this power. Let us start, then,
from this energy, as from the true principle : let
us suppose that the body is a centre of action, and
only a centre of action. We must see what con
sequences thence result for perception, for memory,
and for the relations between body and mind.
III. To take perception first. Here is my body
with its perceptive centres. These centres
Perception vibrate, and I have the representation
of things. On the other hand I have
supposed that these vibrations can
304 MATTER AND MEMORY
neither produce nor translate my perception.
It is, then, outside them. Where is it ? I can
not hesitate as to the answer : positing my body,
I posit a certain image, but with it also the
aggregate of the other images, since there is no
material image which does not owe its qualities,
its determinations, in short its existence, to the
place which it occupies in the totality of the uni
verse. My perception can, then, only be some
part of these objects themselves ; it is in them
rather than they in it. But what is it exactly
within them ? I see that my perception appears
to follow all the vibratory detail of the so-
called sensitive nerves ; and on the other hand
I know that the role of their vibrations is solely to
prepare the reaction of my body on neighbouring
bodies, to sketch out my virtual actions. Per
ception, therefore, consists in detaching, from the
totality of objects, the possible action of my body
upon them. Perception appears, then, as only a
choice. It creates nothing ; its office, on the con
trary, is to eliminate from the totality of images
all those on which I can have no hold, and then,
from each of those which I retain, all that does not
concern the needs of the image which I call my
body. Such is, at least, much simplified, the way
we explain or describe schematically what we
have called pure perception. Let us mark out
at once the intermediate place which we thus
take up between realism and idealism.
That every reality has a kinship, an analogy,
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 305
in short a relation with consciousness this is
Though it what we concede to idealism by the very
only a part fact that we term things images. No
things. philosophical doctrine, moreover, pro
vided that it is consistent with itself, can escape
from this conclusion. But if we could assemble
all the states of consciousness, past, present, and
possible, of all conscious beings, we should still
only have gathered a very small part of material
reality, because images outrun perception on
every side. It is just these images that science
and metaphysic seek to reconstitute, thus restor
ing the whole of a chain of which our perception
grasps only a few links. But in order thus to
discover between perception and reality the
relation of the part to the whole, it is necessary to
leave to perception its true office, which is to
prepare actions. This is what idealism fails to do.
Why is it unable, as we said just now, to pass
from the order manifested in perception to the
order which is successful in science, that is to
say, from the contingency with which our sensa
tions appear to follow each other to the deter
minism which binds together the phenomena of
nature ? Precisely because it attributes to con
sciousness, in perception, a speculative r61e, so that
it is impossible to see what interest this conscious
ness has in allowing to escape, between two sen
sations for instance, the intermediate links through
which the second might be deduced from the first.
These intermediaries and their strict order thus
3O6 MATTER AND MEMORY
remain obscure, whether, with Mill, we make the
intermediaries into possible sensations/ or,
with Kant, hold the substructure of the order
to be the work of an impersonal understand
ing. But suppose that my conscious perception
has an entirely practical destination, that it
simply indicates, in the aggregate of things, that
which interests my possible action upon them :
I can then understand that all the rest escapes
me, and that, nevertheless, all the rest is of the
same nature as what I perceive. My conscious
ness of matter is then no longer either subjective,
as it is for English idealism, or relative, as it
is for the Kantian idealism. It is not subjec
tive, for it is in things rather than in me. It is
not relative, because the relation between the
phenomenon and the thing is not that of
appearance to reality, but merely that of the part
to the whole.
Here we seem to return to realism. But real
ism, unless corrected on an essential point, is as
The mistake inacceptable as idealism, and for the
is to set up . . ,
homogeneous same reason. Idealism, we said, cannot
space as a real . , , .
or even ideal pass from the order manifested in per-
medium prior v i_ r i
to extension, ception to the order which is successful
in science, that is to say to reality. Inversely,
realism fails to draw from reality the immediate
consciousness which we have of it. Taking the
point of view of ordinary realism, we have, on
the one hand, a composite matter made up of
more or less independent parts, diffused through-
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 307
out space, and, on the other, a mind which can
have no point of contact with matter, unless it
be, as materialists maintain, the unintelligible
epiphenomenon. If we prefer the standpoint
of the Kantian realism, we find between the
thing-in-itself, that is to say the real, and the
sensuous manifold from which we construct our
knowledge, no conceivable relation, no common
measure. Now, if we get to the bottom of these
two extreme forms of realism, we see that they
converge towards the same point : both raise homo
geneous space as a barrier between the intellect
and things. The simpler realism makes of this
space a real medium, in which things are in sus
pension ; Kantian realism regards it as an ideal
medium, in which the multiplicity of sensations
is coordinated ; but for both of them this
medium is given to begin with, as the necessary
condition of what comes to abide in it. And if we
try to get to the bottom of this common hypo
thesis, in its turn, we find that it consists in at
tributing to homogeneous space a disinterested
office : space is supposed either merely to uphold
material reality, or to have the function, still
purely speculative, of furnishing sensations with
means of coordinating themselves. So that
the obscurity of realism, like that of idealism,
comes from the fact that, in both of them, our
conscious perception and the conditions of our
conscious perception are assumed to point to
pure knowledge, not to action. But suppose now
308 MATTER AND MEMORY
that this homogeneous space is not logically an
terior, but posterior to material things and to
the pure knowledge which we can have of them ;
suppose that extensity is prior to space ; suppose
that homogeneous space concerns our action and
only our action, being like an infinitely fine net
work which we stretch beneath material con
tinuity in order to render ourselves masters of
it, to decompose it according to the plan of our
activities and our needs. Then, not only has our
hypothesis the advantage of bringing us into
harmony with science, which shows us each thing
exercising an influence on all the others and con
sequently occupying, in a certain sense, the whole
of the extended (although we perceive of this
thing only its centre and mark its limits at the
point where our body ceases to have any hold
upon it). Not only has it the advantage, in
metaphysic, of suppressing or lessening the contra
dictions raised by divisibility in space, contra
dictions which always arise, as we have shown,
from our failure to dissociate the two points of
view, that of action from that of knowledge. It
has, above all, the advantage of overthrowing
the insurmountable barriers raised by realism be
tween the extended world and our perception of
it. For whereas this doctrine assumes on the one
hand an external reality which is multiple and
divided, and on the other sensations alien from
extensity and without possible contact with it,
we find that concrete extensity is not really
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 309
divided, any more than immediate perception is
in truth unextended. Starting from realism, we
come back to the point to which idealism had led
us ; we replace perception in things. And we see
realism and idealism ready to come to an under
standing when we set aside the postulate, uncriti
cally accepted by both, which served them as a
common frontier.
To sum up : if we suppose an extended con
tinuum, and, in this continuum, the centre of real
action which is represented by our body, its
activity will appear to illumine all those parts
of matter with which at each successive moment
it can deal. The same needs, the same power of
action, which have delimited our body in matter,
will also carve out distinct bodies in the sur
rounding medium. Everything will happen as if
we allowed to filter through us that action of ex
ternal things which is real, in order to arrest and
retain that which is virtual : this virtual action of
things upon our body and of our body upon things
is our perception itself. But since the excitations
which our body receives from surrounding bodies
determine unceasingly, within its substance, nascent
reactions, since these internal movements of the
cerebral substance thus sketch out at every mo
ment our possible action on things, the state of
the brain exactly corresponds to the perception.
It is neither its cause, nor its effect, nor in any
sense its duplicate : it merely continues it, the
perception being our virtual action and the cere
bral state our action already begun.
3TO MATTER AND MEMORY
IV. But this theory of pure perception * had
to be both qualified and completed in regard to two
Real action points. For the so-called pure percep-
Stton irtnal tion > which is like a fragment of reality,
SSuS^d detached just as it is, would belong to a
memory. being unable to mingle with the percep
tion of other bodies that of its own body, that is
to say, its affections ; nor with its intuition of
the actual moment that of other moments, that
is to say, its memory. In other words, we have,
to begin with, and for the convenience of study,
treated the living body as a mathematical point
in space and conscious perception as a mathe
matical instant in time. We then had to restore
to the body its extensity and to perception its
duration. By this we restored to consciousness
its two subjective elements, affectivity and
memory.
What is an affection ? Our perception, we
said, indicates the possible action of our body on
others. But our body, being extended, is capable
of acting upon itself as well as upon other bodies.
Into our perception, then, something of our body
must enter. When we are dealing with external
bodies, these are, by hypothesis, separated from
ours by a space, greater or less, which measures
the remoteness in time of their promise or of
their menace : this is why our perception of these
bodies indicates only possible actions. But the
more the distance diminishes between these
bodies and our own, the more the possible action
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 311
tends to transform itself into a real action, the
call for action becoming more urgent in the
measure and proportion that the distance dimi
nishes. And when this distance is nil, that is to
say when the body to be perceived is our own
body, it is a real and no longer a virtual action
that our perception sketches out. Such is,
precisely, the nature of pain, an actual effort of
the damaged part to set things to rights, an
effort that is local, isolated, and thereby con
demned to failure, in an organism which can no
longer act except as a whole. Pain is therefore
in the place where it is felt, as the object is at the
place where it is perceived. Between the affec
tion felt and the image perceived there is this
difference, that the affection is within our body,
the image outside our body. And that is why the
surface of our body, the common limit of this and
of other bodies, is given to us in the form
both of sensations and of an image.
In this interiority of affective sensation con
sists its subjectivity ; in that exteriority of
images in general their objectivity. But here
again we encounter the ever-recurring mistake
with which we have been confronted throughout
this work. It is supposed that perception and
sensation exist for their own sake ; the philosopher
ascribes to them an entirely speculative function ;
and, as he has overlooked those real and virtual
actions with which sensation and perception are
bound up and by which, according as the action
312 MATTER AND MEMORY
is virtual or real, perception and sensation are
characterized and distinguished, he becomes un
able to find any other difference between them
than a difference of degree. Then, profiting by
the fact that affective sensation is but vaguely
localized (because the effort it involves is an
indistinct effort) at once he declares it to be
unextended ; and these attenuated affections or
unextended sensations he sets up as the material
with which we are supposed to build up images
in space. Thereby he condemns himself to an
impossibility of explaining either whence arise
the elements of consciousness, or sensations, which
he sets up as so many absolutes, or how, unex
tended, they find their way to space and are co
ordinated there, or why, in it, they adopt a par
ticular order rather than any other, or, finally,
how they manage to make up an experience which
is regular and common to all men. This experi
ence, the necessary field of our activity, is, on
the contrary, what we should start from. Pure
perceptions, therefore, or images, are what we
should posit at the outset. And sensations, far
from being the materials from which the image
is wrought, will then appear as the impurity
which is introduced into it, being that part of
our own body which we project into all others.
V. But, as long as we confine ourselves to
sensation and to pure perception, we can hardly
be said to be dealing with the spirit. No doubt
we demonstrate, as against the theory of an
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 313
epiphenomenal consciousness, that no cerebral
state is the equivalent of a perception.
spirit, not a No doubt the choice of perceptions from
manifesto- . . , . ,, ,
tion of among images in general is the effect of a
discernment which foreshadows spirit. No
doubt also the material universe itself, denned as
the totality of images, is a kind of consciousness,
a consciousness in which everything compensates
and neutralizes everything else, a consciousness of
which all the potential parts, balancing each
other by a reaction which is always equal to the
action, reciprocally hinder each other from stand
ing out. But to touch the reality of spirit we
must place ourselves at the point where an indi
vidual consciousness, continuing and retaining the
past in a present enriched by it, thus escapes the
law of necessity, the law which ordains that the
past shall ever follow itself in a present which
merely repeats it in another form, and that all
things shall ever be flowing away. When we pass
from pure perception to memory, we definitely
abandon matter for spirit.
VI. The theory of memory, around which
the whole of our work centres, must be both
the theoretic consequence and the experimental
verification of our theory of pure perception.
That the cerebral states which accompany per
ception are neither its cause nor its duplicate,
and that perception bears to its physiological
counterpart the relation of a virtual action to an
action begun this we cannot substantiate by
314 MATTER AND MEMORY
facts, since on our hypothesis everything is bound
to happen as if perception were a consequence of
the state of the brain. For, in pure perception,
the perceived object is a present object, a body
which modifies our own. Its image is then ac
tually given, and therefore the facts permit us to
say indifferently (though we are far from knowing
our own meaning equally well in the two cases)
that the cerebral modifications sketch the nascent
reactions of our body or that they create in
consciousness the duplicate of the present image.
But with memory it is otherwise, for a remem
brance is the representation of an absent object.
Here the two hypotheses must have opposite con
sequences. If, in the case of a present object, a
state of our body is thought sufficient to create
the representation of the object, still more must
it be thought so in the case of an object
that is represented though absent. It is neces
sary therefore, on this theory, that the remem
brance should arise from the attenuated repetition
of the cerebral phenomenon which occasioned the
primary perception, and should consist simply
in a perception weakened. Whence this double
thesis : Memory is only a function of the brain, and
there is only a difference of intensity between per
ception and recollection. If, on the contrary, the
cerebral state in no way begets our perception of
the present object but merely continues it, it may
also prolong and convert into action the recol
lection of it which we summon up, but it cannot
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 315
give birth to that recollection. And as, on
the other hand, our perception of the present
object is something of that object itself, our
representation of the absent object must be a
phenomenon of quite another order than percep
tion, since between presence and absence there are
no degrees, no intermediate stages. Whence this
double thesis, which is the opposite of the former :
Memory is something other than a function of the
brain, and there is not merely a difference of degree,
but of kind, between perception and recollection.
The conflict between the two theories now takes
an acute form ; and this time experience can
judge between them.
We will not here recapitulate in detail the proof
we have tried to elaborate, but merely recall its
essential points. All the arguments from fact,
which may be invoked in favour of a probable
accumulation of memories in the cortical substance,
are drawn from localized disorders of memory.
But, if recollections were really deposited in the
brain, to definite gaps in memory characteristic le
sions of the brain would correspond. Now, in those
forms of amnesia in which a whole period of our
past existence, for example, is abruptly and entirely
obliterated from memory, we do not observe any
precise cerebral lesion ; and, on the contrary, in those
disorders of memory where cerebral localization is
distinct and certain, that is to say, in the different
types of aphasia and in the diseases of visual or
auditory recognition, we do not find that certain
3l6 MATTER AND MEMORY
definite recollections are as it were torn from their
seat, but that it is the whole faculty of remember
ing that is more or less diminished in vitality,
as if the subject had more or less difficulty in
bringing his recollections into contact with the
present situation. The mechanism of this con
tact was, therefore, what we had to study in
order to ascertain whether the office of the brain
is not rather to ensure its working than to im
prison the recollections in cells.
We were thus led to follow through its
windings the progressive movement by which
past and present come into contact with
Recognition. , , , . ,
each other, that is to say, the process
of recognition. And we found, in fact, that the
recognition of a present object might be effected
in two absolutely different ways, but that in
neither case did the brain act as a reservoir of
images. Sometimes, by an entirely passive recog
nition, rather acted than thought, the body re
sponds to a perception that recurs by a move
ment or attitude that has become automatic : in
this case everything is explained by the motor
apparatus which habit has set up in the body,
and lesions of the memory may result from the
destruction of these mechanisms. Sometimes, on
the other hand, recognition is actively produced
by memory-images which go out to meet the
present perception ; but then it is necessary that
these recollections, at the moment that they over
lie the perception, should be able to set going
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 317
in the brain the same machinery that percep
tion ordinarily sets to work in order to produce
actions ; if not foredoomed to impotence, they
will have no tendency to become actual. And
this is why, in all cases where a lesion of the brain
attacks a certain category of recollections, the
affected recollections do not resemble each other
by all belonging to the same period, for instance,
or by any logical relationship to each other, but
simply in that they are all auditive, or all visual,
or all motor. That which is damaged appears to
be the various sensorial or motor areas, or, more
often still, those appendages which permit of their
being set going from within the cortex, rather than
the recollections themselves . We even went further,
and by an attentive study of the recognition of
words, as also of the phenomena of sensory apha
sia, we endeavoured to prove that recognition
is in no way effected by a mechanical awakening of
memories that are asleep in the brain. It implies,
on the contrary, a more or less high degree of ten
sion in consciousness, which goes to fetch pure re
collections in pure memory in order to materialize
them progressively by contact with the present
perception.
But what is this pure memory, what are pure
recollections ? By the answer to this enquiry we
completed the demonstration of our thesis. We
had just established its first point, that is to say,
that memory is something other than a function
of the brain. We had still to show, by the analysis
318 MATTER AND MEMORY
of pure recollection/ that there is not between
recollection and perception a mere difference of
degree but a radical difference of kind.
VII. Let us point out to begin with the meta
physical, and no longer merely psychological,
bearing of this last problem. No doubt
The different , . . , , ,
planes of con- we have a thesis of pure psychology
sciousness. . . , . .
in a proposition such as this: recol
lection is a weakened perception. But let there
be no mistake : if recollection is only a weakened
perception, inversely perception must be some
thing like an intenser memory. Now the germ
of English idealism is to be found here. This
idealism consists in finding only a difference of
degree, and not of kind, between the reality of the
object perceived and the ideality of the object
conceived. And the belief that we construct
matter from our interior states and that per
ception is only a true hallucination, also arises
from this thesis. It is this belief that we have
always combated whenever we have treated of
matter. Either, then, our conception of matter
is false, or memory is radically distinct from
perception.
We have thus transposed a metaphysical prob
lem so as to make it coincide with a psycho
logical problem which direct observation is able
to solve. How does psychology solve it ? If the
memory of a perception were but this perception
weakened, it might happen to us, for instance, to
take the perception of a slight sound for the recol-
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 319
lection of a loud noise. Now such a confusion
never occurs. But we may go further, and say
that the consciousness of a recollection never
occurs as an actual weak state which we try to
relegate to the past so soon as we become aware
of its weakness. How, indeed, unless we already
possessed the representation of a past previously
lived, could we relegate to it the less intense
psychical states, when it would be so simple to
set them alongside of strong states as a present
experience more confused beside a present exper
ience more distinct ? The truth is that memory
does not consist in a regression from the present to
the past, but, on the contrary, in a progress from
the past to the present. It is in the past that
we place ourselves at a stroke. We start from a
* virtual state which we lead onwards, step by
step, through a series of different planes of con
sciousness, up to the goal where it is materialized
in an actual perception ; that is to say, up to
the point where it becomes a present, active state ;
in fine, up to that extreme plane of our conscious
ness against which our body stands out. In
this virtual state pure memory consists.
How is it that the testimony of consciousness on
this point is misunderstood ? How is it that we
make of recollection a weakened perception, of
which it is impossible to say either why we relegate
it to the past, how we rediscover its date, or
by what right it reappears at one moment rather
than at another ? Simply because we forget the
320 MATTER AND MEMORY
practical end of all our actual psychical states.
Perception is made into a disinterested work of the
mind, a pure contemplation. Then, as pure recol
lection can evidently be only something of this
kind (since it does not correspond to a present
and urgent reality), memory and perception
become states of the same nature, and between
them no other difference than a difference of in
tensity can be found. But the truth is that our
present should not be denned as that which is
more intense : it is that which acts on us and
which makes us act, it is sensory and it is
motor ; our present is, above all, the state of
our body. Our past, on the contrary, is that
which acts no longer but which might act,
and will act by inserting itself into a present
sensation of which it borrows the vitality. It
is true that, from the moment when the recol
lection actualizes itself in this manner, it ceases
to be a recollection and becomes once more a
perception.
We understand then why a remembrance can
not be the result of a state of the brain. The state
of the brain continues the remembrance ; it gives
it a hold on the present by the materiality which
it confers upon it : but pure memory is a spiritual
manifestation. With memory we are in very truth
in the domain of spirit.
Association- VIIL lt WaS nOt OUr task tO ex ~
tmmf plore this domain. Placed at the con-
ideas, fluence of mind and matter, desirous
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 321
chiefly of seeing the one flow into the other, we
had only to retain, of the spontaneity of intellect,
its place of conjunction with bodily mechanism.
In this way we were led to consider the phenomena
of association and the birth of the simplest general
ideas.
What is the cardinal error of associationism ?
It is to have set all recollections on the same plane,
to have misunderstood the greater or less distance
which separates them from the present bodily
state, that is from action. Thus associationism
is unable to explain either how the recollection
clings to the perception which evokes it, or
why association is effected by similarity or con
tiguity rather than in any other way, or, finally, by
what caprice a particular recollection is chosen
among the thousand others which similarity or
contiguity might equally well attach to the present
perception. This means that associationism has
mixed and confounded all the different planes of
consciousness, and that it persists in regarding a less
complete as a less complex recollection, whereas
it is in reality a recollection less dreamed, more
impersonal, nearer to action and therefore more
capable of moulding itself like a ready-made
garment upon the new character of the present
situation. The opponents of associationism have,
moreover, followed it on to this ground. They
combat the theory because it explains the higher
operations of the mind by association, but not
because it misunderstands the true nature of
y
322 MATTER AND MEMORY
association itself. Yet this is the original vice of
associationism.
Between the plane of action the plane in which
our body has condensed its past into motor habits,
and the plane of pure memory, where our mind
retains in all its details the picture of our past life,
we believe that we can discover thousands of
different planes of consciousness, a thousand
integral and yet diverse repetitions of the whole of
the experience through which we have lived. To
complete a recollection by more personal details
does not at all consist in mechanically juxtaposing
other recollections to this, but in transporting
ourselves to a wider plane of consciousness, in
going away from action in the direction of dream.
Neither does the localizing of a recollection con
sist in inserting it mechanically among other
memories, but in describing, by an increasing
expansion of the memory as a whole, a circle large
enough to include this detail from the past. These
planes, moreover, are not given as ready-made
things superposed the one on the other. Rather
they exist virtually, with that existence which is
proper to things of the spirit. The intellect, for
ever moving in the interval which separates them,
unceasingly finds them again, or creates them anew :
the life of intellect consists in this very movement.
Then we understand why the laws of association
are similarity and contiguity rather than any other
laws, and why memory chooses among recollec
tions which are similar or contiguous certain
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 323
images rather than other images, and, finally,
how by the combined work of body and mind the
earliest general ideas are formed. The interest
of a living being lies in discovering in the present
situation that which resembles a former situation,
and then in placing alongside of that present
situation what preceded and followed the previous
one, in order to profit by past experience. Of all
the associations which can be imagined, those of
resemblance and contiguity are therefore at first
the only associations that have a vital utility.
But, in order to understand the mechanism of
these associations and above all the apparently
capricious selection which they make of mem
ories, we must place ourselves alternately on
the two extreme planes of consciousness which
we have called the plane of action and the plane
of dream. In the first are displayed only motor
habits ; these may be called associations which are
acted or lived, rather than represented : here
resemblance and contiguity are fused together,
for analogous external situations, as they recur,
have ended by connecting together certain bodily
movements, and thenceforward the same auto
matic reaction, in which we unfold these contiguous
movements, will also draw from the situation
which occasions them its resemblance with former
situations. But, as we pass from movements to
images and from poorer to richer images, resem
blance and contiguity part company : they end
by contrasting sharply with each other on that
324 MATTER AND MEMORY
other extreme plane where no action is any
longer affixed to the images. The choice of
one resemblance among many, of one contig
uity among others, is, therefore, not made at
random : it depends on the ever varying de
gree of the tension of memory, which, according
to its tendency to insert itself in the present
act or to withdraw from it, transposes itself as
a whole from one key into another. And this
double movement of memory between its two ex
treme limits also sketches out, as we have shown,
the first general ideas, motor habits ascending to
seek similar images in order to extract resemblances
from them, and similar images coming down
towards motor habits, to fuse themselves, for
instance, in the automatic utterance of the word
which makes them one. The nascent generality
of the idea consists, then, in a certain activity of
the mind, in a movement between action and
representation. And this is why, as we have said,
it will always be easy for a certain philosophy to
localize the general idea at one of the two ex
tremities, to make it crystallize into words or
evaporate into memories, whereas it really consists
in the transit of the mind as it passes from one
term to the other.
IX. By representing elementary mental acti
vity in this manner to ourselves, and by thus
making of our body and all that sur-
oi body rounds it the pointed end ever moving,
ever driven into the future by the
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 325
weight of our past, we were able to confirm and
illustrate what we had said of the function of the
body, and at the same time to prepare the way
for an approximation of body and mind.
For after having successively studied pure
perception and pure memory, we still had to bring
them together. If pure recollection is already
spirit, and if pure perception is still in a sense
matter, we ought to be able, by placing ourselves
at their meeting place, to throw some light on
the reciprocal action of spirit and matter. Pure,
that is to say instantaneous, perception is, in fact,
only an ideal, an extreme. Every perception fills
a certain depth of duration, prolongs the past
into the present, and thereby partakes of memory.
So that if we take perception in its concrete
form, as a synthesis of pure memory and pure
perception, that is to say of mind and matter, we
compress within its narrowest limits the problem
of the union of soul and body. This is the attempt
we have made especially in the latter part of this
essay.
The opposition of the two principles, in dualism
in general, resolves itself into the threefold opposi
tion of the inextended and the extended, quality
and quantity, freedom and necessity. If our
conception of the function of the body, if our
analyses of pure perception and pure memory,
are destined to throw light on any aspect of the
correlation of body and mind, it can only be on
condition of suppressing or toning down these
326 MATTER AND MEMORY
three oppositions. We will, then, examine them in
turn, presenting here in a more metaphysical
form the conclusions which we have made a
point of drawing from psychology alone.
ist. If we imagine on the one hand the extended
really divided into corpuscles, for example, and
on the other a consciousness with sen
sations, in themselves inextensive, which
come to project themselves into space, we shall
evidently find nothing common to such matter
and such a consciousness, to body and mind.
But this opposition between perception and matter
is the artificial work of an understanding which
decomposes and recomposes according to its
habits or its laws : it is not given in immediate
intuition. What is given are not inextensive sen
sations : how should they find their way back to
space, choose a locality within it, and coordinate
themselves there so as to build up an experience
that is common to all men ? And what is real
is not extension, divided into independent parts :
how, being deprived of all possible relationship
to our consciousness, could it unfold a series
of changes of which the relations and the order
exactly correspond to the relations and the order
of our representations ? That which is given,
that which is real, is something intermediate
between divided extension and pure inexten-
sion. It is what we have termed the extensive,
Extensity is the most salient quality of percep
tion. It is in consolidating and in subdividing
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 327
it by means of an abstract space, stretched by
us beneath it for the needs of action, that we
constitute the composite and infinitely divisible
extension. It is, on the other hand, in subtilizing
it, in making it, in turn, dissolve into affective
sensations and evaporate into a counterfeit of
pure ideas, that we obtain those inextensive
sensations with which we afterwards vainly
endeavour to reconstitute images. And the two
opposite directions in which we pursue this
double labour open quite naturally before us,
because it is a result of the very necessities of
action that extension should divide itself up
for us into absolutely independent objects (whence
an encouragement to go on subdividing extension) ;
andthat we should pass by insensible degrees from
affection to perception (whence a tendency to
suppose perception more and more inextensive).
But our understanding, of which the func
tion is to set up logical distinctions, and con
sequently clean-cut oppositions, throws itself
into each of these ways in turn, and follows each
to the end. It thus sets up, at one extremity,
an infinitely divisible extension, at the other
sensations which are absolutely inextensive. And
it creates thereby the opposition which it after
wards contemplates amazed.
2nd. Far less artificial is the opposition between
quality and quantity, that is to say between
consciousness and movement : but this
Tension. . . ..
opposition is radical only if we have
328 MATTER AND MEMORY
already accepted the other. For if you suppose
that the qualities of things are nothing but inex-
tensive sensations affecting a consciousness, so
that these qualities represent merely, as so
many symbols, homogeneous and calculable
changes going on in space, you must imagine be
tween these sensations and these changes an
incomprehensible correspondence. On the con
trary, as soon as you give up establishing be
tween them a priori this factitious contrariety,
you see the barriers which seemed to separate
them fall one after another. First, it is not
true that consciousness, turned round on itself, is
confronted with a merely internal procession of
inextensive perceptions. It is inside the very
things perceived that you put back pure percep
tion, and the first obstacle is thus removed. You
are confronted with a second, it is true : the homo
geneous and calculable changes on which science
works seem to belong to multiple and independent
elements, such as atoms, of which these changes
appear as mere accidents, and this multiplicity
comes in between the perception and its object.
But if the division of the extended is purely
relative to our possible action upon it, the idea
of independent corpuscles is a fortiori schematic
and provisional. Science itself, moreover, allows
us to discard it ; and so the second barrier falls.
A last interval remains to be over-leapt : that
which separates the heterogeneity of qualities from
the apparent homogeneity of movements that
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 329
are extended. But, just because we have set
aside the elements, atoms or what not, to
which these movements had been affixed, we
are no longer dealing with that movement which
is the accident of a moving body, with that
abstract motion which the mechanician studies
and which is nothing, at bottom, but the common
measure of concrete movements. How could this
abstract motion, which becomes immobility when
we alter our point of reference, be the basis of
real changes, that is, of changes that are felt ?
How, composed as it is of a series of instantaneous
positions, could it fill a duration of which the parts
go over and merge each into the others ? Only one
hypothesis, then, remains possible; namely, that
concrete movement, capable, like consciousness,
of prolonging its past into its present, capable,
by repeating itself, of engendering sensible quali
ties, already possesses something akin to con-
ciousness, something akin to sensation. On this
theory, it might be this same sensation diluted,
spread out over an infinitely larger number of
moments, this same sensation quivering, as we
have said, like a chrysalis within its envelope.
Then a last point would remain to be cleared
up : how is the contraction effected, the con
traction no longer of homogeneous movements
into distinct qualities, but of changes that are
less heterogeneous into changes that are more
heterogeneous ? But this question is answered
by our analysis of concrete perception : this
33 MATTER AND MEMORY
perception, the living synthesis of pure per
ception and pure memory, necessarily sums up
in its apparent simplicity an enormous multi
plicity of moments. Between sensible qualities,
as regarded in our representation of them,
and these same qualities treated as calculable
changes, there is therefore only a difference in
rhythm of duration, a difference of internal ten
sion. Thus, by the idea of tension we have
striven to overcome the opposition between quality
and quantity, as by the idea of extension that
between the inextended and the extended. Exten
sion and tension admit of degrees, multiple but
always determined. The function of the under
standing is to detach from these two genera,
extension and tension, their empty container,
that is to say, homogeneous space and pure
quantity, and thereby to substitute, for supple
realities which permit of degrees, rigid abstrac
tions born of the needs of action, which can
only be taken or left ; and to create thus, for
reflective thought, dilemmas of which neither
alternative is accepted by reality.
3rd. But if we regard in this way the relations
of the extended to the inextended, of quality
Freedom and to quantity, we shall have less difficulty
necessity. j n comprehending the third and last
opposition, that of freedom and necessity. Abso
lute necessity would be represented by a perfect
equivalence of the successive moments of dura
tion, each to each. Is it so with the duration
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 33!
of the material universe ? Can each moment
be mathematically deduced from the preceding
moment ? We have throughout this work, and
for the convenience of study, supposed that it
was really so ; and such is, in fact, the distance
between the rhythm of our duration and that of
the flow of things, that the contingency of the
course of nature, so profoundly studied in recent
philosophy, must, for us, be practically equiva
lent to necessity. So let us keep to our hypo
thesis, though it might have to be attenuated.
Even so, freedom is not in nature an im-
perium in imperio. We have said that this
nature might be regarded as a neutralized and
consequently a latent consciousness, a conscious
ness of which the eventual manifestations hold
each other reciprocally in check, and annul each
other precisely at the moment when they might
appear. The first gleams which are thrown upon
it by an individual consciousness do not therefore
shine on it with an unheralded light : this con
sciousness does but remove an obstacle ; it extracts
from the whole that is real a part that is virtual,
chooses and finally disengages that which interests
it ; and although, by that intelligent choice, it indeed
manifests that it owes to spirit its form, it assuredly
takes from nature its matter. Moreover, while
we watch the birth of that consciousness we are
confronted, at the same time, by the apparition
of living bodies, capable, even in their simplest
forms, of movements spontaneous and unforeseen.
332 MATTER AND MEMORY
The progress of living matter consists in a
differentiation of function which leads first to
the production and then to the increasing com
plication of a nervous system capable of canali
zing excitations and of organizing actions :
the more the higher centres develop, the more
numerous become the motor paths among which
the same excitation allows the living being to
choose, in order that it may act. An ever greater
latitude left to movement in space this indeed
is what is seen. What is not seen is the growing
and accompanying tension of consciousness in
time. Not only, by its memory of former experi
ence, does this consciousness retain the past better
and better, so as to organize it with the present in
a newer and richer decision ; but, living with an
intenser life, contracting, by its memory of the
immediate experience, a growing number of exter
nal moments in its present duration, it becomes
more capable of creating acts of which the inner
indetermination, spread over as large a multi
plicity of the moments of matter as you please,
will pass the more easily through the meshes of
necessity. Thus, whether we consider it in time
or in space, freedom always seems to have its
roots deep in necessity and to be intimately
organized with it. Spirit borrows from matter the
perceptions on which it feeds, and restores them
to matter in the form of movements which it
has stamped with its own freedom.
INDEX
Achilles, The, of Zeno, 252.
Action, and pure knowledge, xvii ;
and pure memory, planes of, 210 ;
and time, 23 ; necessary, 6 ; needs
of, and bodies, 261 ; orientation
of consciousness towards, 233 ;
plane of, 130, 217 ; possible, 7 ;
real and virtual, 310 ; reflex and
voluntary, 81 ; the true point of
departure, 67 ; useful, and pure
knowledge, 262 ; virtual and real,
57.
Actual sensation and pure memory
differ in kind, 179.
Adaptation, the general aim of life,
96.
Adler, 143.
Affection, 310 ; always localized, 61 ;
and perception, difference between,
53 ; has, from the outset, some
extensity, 61 ; impurity in percep
tion, 60 ; its source, 57.
Affections, i ; an invitation to act, 2.
Affective states, vaguely localized, 52.
Amnesia, retrogressive, 224.
Amnesias, systematized, 222.
Aphasia, 231 ; cases of, 139 ; con
ception of, xv ; diagrams of sen
sory, 156 ; sensory, 149 ; sensory,
evidence from certain forms of, 139.
Aphasias, the true, 151.
Apraxia, in.
Amaud, 141, note ; 142, note.
Arrow, The, of Zeno, 252.
Association, not the primary fact,
215 ; of ideas, in what it consists,
103 ; of ideas, laws of, 212 ; of
perceptions with memory, 106.
Association?, of similarity and con
tiguity, 212 ff.
Associationism, error of, 171, 212,
321 ; intellectualizes ideas too
much, 213.
Attention, and recognition, 119; a
power of analysis, 124 ; compared
to telegraph-clerk, 123 ; first, an
adaptation of the body, 120 ; nega
tively, inhibition of movement,
120 perception and memory.
relations of, 120 ff. ; to life, xiv,
226 ; to life, conditioned by body,
225.
Atom, Faraday s theory of, 265 ;
Kelvin s theory of, 265 ; modern
theories of, 266 ; properties of, 263.
Auditory, image, 99 ; memory, 133 ;
memory of words, 161.
Automatic, the, and the voluntary,
145-
Automatism, no ; wide range of, 99.
Babilee, 149 note.
Bain, 161.
Ball, 201 note, 229 note.
Ballet, 144 note.
Bastian, 121 note, 140, 157 note.
Bateman, ipi note, 141 note.
Becoming, instantaneous section of,
86.
Berkeley, and Descartes, ix ; and
mechanical philosophers, ix ; and
the object, viii ; on extensity, 284
ft
Berlin, 101 note.
Bernard, 101 note, 109 note, 144
note, 149 note, 153 note, 156 note.
Blindness and deafness, psychic, 1 32 ;
word, 132 ; psychic, 108, in, 161 ;
psychic, as a disturbance of motor
habit, 115 ; psychic, two kinds of,
115 ; word, two kinds of, 133. ,
Bodies, distinct, and the needs of life,
261.
Body, a centre of action, 5, 178 ; a
centre of perceptions, 43 ; and
mind, relation of, 295 ; and soul,
relation of, 234 ; an instrument of
action, 299 ; an instrument of
choice, 233 ; a moving boundary
between future and past, 88 ; a
moving, trajectory of, 246 ; a
place of passage, 196 ; conditions
attention to life, 225 ; conscious
ness of, is my present, 177 ; does
not give rise to representation, 5 ;
education of, 139 ; is that which
fixes the mind, 226 ; known from
within as well as from without, i ;
334
INDEX
provides for the exercise of choice,
5 ; receives and gives back move
ment, 5 ; structure of, 3 ; the
living, its unique place, i.
Bradley, 120 note.
Brain, and memory, relation between,
119 ; an instrument of analysis
and of choice, 20 ; a telephonic
exchange, 19 ; cannot beget repre
sentation, 8 1 ; concerned with
motor reaction, 8 ; functions of
the, 1 8 ; injuries to the, effect of,
231 ; lesions affect movements,
not recollections, 88 ; lesions affect
nascent or possible action, 120 ;
lesions and recognition, attentive
and inattentive, 132 ; lesions and
the motor diagram, 143 ; not con
cerned with conscious perception, 8.
Broadbent, 101 note, 156.
Brochard, 106 note.
Centre oi representation, the body, 64.
Centres, of force, 265 ; of perception,
1 60 ; of verbal images, problem
atic, 159.
Cerebral, localization, 131; mechanism,
conditions memories, does not
ensure their survival, 84 ; me
chanism, links the past with action,
88 ; vibrations, cannot create
images, 10 ; vibrations, contained
in the material world, 10.
Change, and permanence, 260.
Character, a synthesis of past states,
188.
Charcpt, 109, 143, 156.
Chemistry, studies bodies rather than
matter, 263.
Clerk-Maxwell, 263 note.
Colours, and rhythm of movement,
268.
Common sense, and matter, x; and
object, viii.
Conceptualism and nominalism,
criticism of, 202.
Consciousness, actual, deals with
useful, rejects the superfluous, 188 ;
and matter, 276 ff.; and the inner
history of things, 276 ; chief office
of, 182 ; different planes of, 318 ff. ;
double movement in, 216 ; illusion
in regard to, 182 ; its office in per
ception, 69 ; its part in affection, 2 ;
not the synonym of existence, 181 ;
of another tension than ours, 275 ;
orientation of, towards action, 233 ;
rhythm of, 272 ; the fringe of, 97;
the note of the present, 181.
Conscious perception, a discernment,
31 ; is our power of choice, 26 ;
materialist s view of, n.
Contiguity and similarity, associa
tions of, 212 ff.
Continuity, universal, and science,
260.
Cowles, 228 note.
Dawn, of human experience, 241.
Deafness, and blindness, psychic, 132;
and blindness, word, 132 ; psychic,
does not hinder hearing, 161 ; word,
two kinds of, 133 ; word, with re
tention of acoustic memory, 142.
Descartes, and Berkeley, ix ; and
the laws of motion, 255.
Diagram, the motor, and brain
lesions, 143.
Diagrams, of sensory aphasia, 156.
Dichotomy, The, of Zeno, 251.
Direction, sense of, 115.
Dissociation, is primary, 215
Dodds, in note.
Dogmatism and empiricism, ignore
duration, 242.
Drawing, methods of, 116.
Dream, plane of, 129, 218 ; power of,
94-
Dreamer, the, 198.
Dreams, memory in, 200.
Drugs, toxic, effect of, 228.
Dualism, ordinary, 293 ff. ; trans
cended, 236.
Dunan, 286 note.
Duration, 243 ; our own, and quality,
271 ; tension of, determines the
measure of liberty, 279 ; tensions of
275-
Duval, 200 note.
Dynamises and mechanists, xvi.
Dyslexic, 101 note.
Ear, the mental, 166.
Egger, 200 note.
Eleatics, paradoxes of, 253.
Empiricism and dogmatism, 239 ;
ignore duration, 242.
Epiphenomenalism, x.
Epiphenomenon.and recollection, 104.
Equilibrium, intellectual, how upset,
225.
Existence, capital problem of, 189 ;
conditions implied in, 189 ; im
plies conscious apprehension and
regular connexion, 190 ; outside of
consciousness, 183 ; real though
unperceived, in time and in space,
185.
Exuer, and empty time, 272.
Experience, human, dawn of, 241 ;
the true starting-point, 312.
Extended, the, and the inextended,
3*5.
INDEX
335
Extension, 326 ; and artificial space,
244 ; concrete, not bound up with
inert space, 244 ; idea of, 237.
Extensity, and inextension, 235 ;
concrete, and homogeneous space,
278 ; concrete, not within space,
289 ; perceived, space conceived,
245 ; perception of and sight, 286 ;
visual and tactile, 65.
Exteriority, notion of, 42.
Faraday, and centres of force, 31 ;
and the atom, 265.
Force, centres of, 31, 265 ; in natural
science, 257 ; metaphysical sense
of the word, 257.
Fouillee, 112 note.
Freedom and necessity, 279, 325 ff.,
330 ff. ; degrees of, 296 ; two op
posing points of view concerning,
243-
Freud, 157 note.
Future, no grasp of without outlook
over past, 69.
General idea, essence of the, 2 10.
Generality, 202.
Genus, general idea of, 209.
Goldscheider, 125.
Granville, Mortimer, 101 note.
Grashey, 125, 151 note.
Graves, 153 note.
Habit, 89 ; interpreted by memory,
the study of psychologists, 95.
Habit-memory, 90 ; acts, not repre
sents, the past, 93 ; advantageous,
94 ; comparatively rare, 94 ; in
hibits spontaneous memory, 97;
sets up a machine, 95.
Habits, amassed in the body, 92 ;
formed in action, influence specu
lation, xvi.
Hallucinations, negative, 131 ; veri
dical, 73.
Hamilton, 121 note.
Hearing, intelligent, starts from the
idea, 145 ; mental, 149.
Heterogeneity, qualitative, 76.
Hoffding, 107 note.
Human experience, dawn of, 241.
Idea, and sound, in speech, 154.
Ideas, association of , laws of the, 212.
Ideas, general, 201, 321 ; always in
movement, 210 ; first experienced,
then represented, 208 ; the essence
Of, 2IO.
Idealism, and materialism, 236;
and realism, vii ; and realism,
have a common postulate, 17, 283 ;
English, 282, 287, 289 ; makes
science an accident, 16 ; the ref
on which it is wrecked, 301.
Idealist, the, starts from perception,
14.
Idealists and realists, xvi.
Image, a privileged, 64 ; formed in
the object, 35 ; none without an
object, 38 ; present and repre
senting, 28 ; representation and
thing, vii ; visual or auditory, 99.
Image-centre, a kind of keyboard,
165.
Image- centres, 132.
Images, and the body, i ; belong to
two systems, 12 ; never any thing
but things, 159 ; not created by
cerebral vibrations, ip ; preserved
for use, 70 ; recognition of, 86 ;
the delimiting and fixing of, 233.
Imagination, is not memory, 173.
Indetermination, of the will, 35 ; re
quires preservation of images per
ceived, 69 ; the true principle, 21.
Inextended, the, and the extended,
325-
Inextension, and extensity, 235.
Insanity, a disturbance of the sensori-
motor relations, 228 ; and present
reality, 227.
Intellectual equilibrium, how upset,
225.
Intellectual process, two radically
distinct conceptions of, 127.
Interpretation, general problem of, 145
Intuition, actual and remembered,
70 ; and contact with the real, 241 ;
pure, gives an undivided continu
ity, 239.
James, William, 121 note, 286 note,
289 note.
Janet, Paul, 286 note.
Janet, Pierre, xv note, 151 note, 229
note, 230 note ; study of neuroses,
Kant, 289 note ; and diversity of
phenomena, 244 ; and speculative
reason, 241 ; and the impersonal
understanding, 306 ; on space and
time, 281.
Kantian criticism, ix.
Kay, 102 note, 199 note.
Kelvin, and the atom, 265.
Keyboard, the internal, 165.
Knowledge, relativity of, 241 ; useful
and true, 243.
Kulpe, 125.
Kussmaul, in note, 141, 156 note
Lange, 122 note.
INDEX
Language, elaborate and primitive,
158 ; the hearing of an unknown,
134-
Laquer, in note.
Learning by heart, 89 ft
Lehmami, 105 note.
Leibniz, on Descartes, 255.
Leibnizian monads, 31.
Lepine, 200 note.
Lesions, brain and the motor diagram,
143-
Liberty, measure of determined by
tension of duration, 279.
Lichtheim, 140, 142 note, 156 note.
Light, red, 272.
Lissauer, 108, 116, 117.
Living matter, progress of, 67.
Localization, cerebral, 131.
Lotze, 50.
Luciani, 162 note.
Magnan, 157 note.
Man of impulse, 198.
Marillier, 120 note, 121 note.
Marc6, 141 note.
Materialism and idealism, 236.
Materialism and spiritualism, 13.
Materialism, essence of, 79 ; true
method of refuting, 80.
Materiality, begets oblivion, 232.
Matter, an aggregate of images, vii ;
and common sense, vii ; and con
sciousness, 276 ff. ; and percep
tion, vii, 76 ; and perception, differ
only in degree, 78 ; and percep
tion, kinship of, 292 ; and spirit,
reciprocal action of, 325 ; and
spirit, transition between, 295 ;
an ever renewed present, 178 ;
artificial division of, 259 ; coin
cides with pure perception, 81 ;
considered before dissociation into
existence and appearance, viii ;
definition of, 8 ; existence and
essence of, xvi ; has no occult
power, 78, 81 ; in concrete per
ception, 237 ; living, progress of,
332 ; metaphysic of, 295 ; not the
substratum of a knowledge, 82 ;
philosophers conception of, vii ;
philosophical theory of, 262 ff. ;
philosophy of, 80 ; the vehicle of
an action, 82.
Maudsley, in, 121 note.
Maury, 200 note.
Mechanical philosophers and Berke
ley, ix.
Mechanism of speech, 139.
Mechanists and dynamists, xvi.
Memories, conditioned by cerebral
mechanism, 84 ; supposed destruc
tion of, 160 ; where stored. Fal
lacy involved, 191.
Memory, actualized in an image dif
fers from pure memory, 181 ; and
brain, 86 ; and brain, relation be
tween, 119 ; and perception point
to action, 302 ; a principle inde
pendent of matter, 81 ; a privileged
problem, xii, 83 ; auditory, of
words, 147 ; bodily and true, their
relation, 197 ; capital importance
of problem of, 80 ; circles of, 127 ;
contraction of, 129 ; different
planes of, 129 ; empirical study of,
83 ; expansion of, 128 ; function
of, in relation to things, 279 ; gives
subjective character to perception,
80 ; habit, recalls similarity, 201 ;
habit, inhibits spontaneous me
mory, 97 ; how it becomes actual,
162 ; independent, an appeal to,
90 ; in dreams, 200 ; intersection
of mind and matter, xii ; is spirit,
313 ; its apparent oneness with
the body, 82 ; its part in percep
tion, 70 ; its twofold operation,
80 ; loss of, 149 ; mixed forms of,
103 ; needs motor aid to become
actual, 152 ; not a manifestation
of matter, 313 ; not an emanation
of matter, 237 ; not destroyed by
brain lesions, 132 ; of a sensation
is not a nascent sensation, 174 ; of
words, localization of denied, xv ;
perception and attention, relations
of, 1 20 ff. ; phenomena of, 81 ;
primary function of, 303 ; psycho
logical mechanism of, 82 ; psycho
logy of, 295 ; pure, and action,
planes of, 210 ; pure, and the
memory-image, 170 ; pure, de
tached from life, 179 ; pure, differs
in kind from actual sensation, 179 ;
pure, inextensive and powerless,
1 80 ; pure, interests no part of the
body, 179; pure, its reference to
spirit, 78 ; representative, 94 ff.;
reverberation, in consciousness, of
indetermination, 70 ; spontaneous,
in children and savages, 198 ; spon
taneous, its exaltation and inhibi
tion, 98 ; spontaneous, recalls dif
ferences, 201; subjective side "f
knowledge, 25 ; supplanting .per
ception, 24 ; the condensing power
of, 76 ; the two forms of, 89 ff.; to be
sought apart from motor adapta
tion, 119 ; true, records every mo
ment of duration, 94 ; two forms,
support each other, 98 ; two kinds
of, 195 ; visual, 108.
Memory-image, and habit memory,
INDEX
337
their coalescence, 103 ; and motor
habit, distinct in kind, 103 ; and
pure memory, 170.
Memory-images, and recognition, 92 ;
and the normal consciousness, 96 ;
recognition by, 118 ; utility deter
mines retention of, 97.
Mental and physical, the, not mere
duplicates, 300.
Mental functions, utilitarian char
acter of, xvii.
Mental hearing, 149.
Mental life, tones of, 221.
Mental states, unconscious, 183.
Metaphysical problems, empirical
solution of, 83.
Metaphysics and psychology, relation
of, xv.
Mill, J. S., and possible sensation, 306.
Mind, and body, relation of, 295 ;
degree of tension of, 126 ; normal
work of, 225.
Mnemonics, 101.
Moeli, 157 note.
Moment, the present, how consti
tuted, 178.
More, Henry, and Descartes, 255.
Moremi de Tours, 228 note.
Motion, and its cause, 257 ; in
mechanics, only an abstraction,
268.
Motor aphasia, does not involve word
deafness, 138.
Motor apparatus, in course of con
struction, 112.
Motor diagram, the, 134, 136, 153 ;
and brain lesions, 143.
Movement, absolutely indivisible, 246
ff. ; and its trajectory, 250 ff. ;
as a change of quality, 258 ; can
only produce movement, 119 ;
essence of, 291 ; real, akin to con
sciousness, 267 ; real, and ap
parent, 258 ; real, for the physi
cist, 254 ; real, quality rather than
quantity, 267 ; real, the transfer
ence of a state, 267 ; relative, for
the mathematician, 254 ; rhythm
of, and colours, 268 ; rhythm of,
and sounds, 269.
Movements, consolidated, difficulty
in modifying their order, 112 ;
indivisibles, occupying duration,
268 ; in space and qualities in
consciousness, 267 ; of imitation,
124 ; prepare the choice among
memory-images, 113; real, not
merely change of position, 256.
Moving body, 246 ff.
Miiller, 100 note, 108, 116, 125.
Miinck, 107 note.
Miinsterberg, 125.
Necessity, and freedom, 325, 330 ff ;
natural and freedom, 279.
Negative hallucinations, 151.
Nerves, section of, 7.
Nervous system, 3, 17, 227 ; a con
ductor, 40 ; channel for the trans
mission of movements, 81 ; con
structed in view of action, 21.
Newton, 257 note.
Nominalism and conceptualism,
criticism of, 202 ff.
Object, the, and common sense, viii.
Objects and facts are carved out of
reality, 239.
Oblivion and materiality, 232.
Oppenheim, 99 note.
Order of representation, necessary or
contingent, 187.
Orientation of consciousness, towards
action, 233.
Pain, a local effort, 56 ; real signifi
cance of, 55; the nature of, 311.
Parallelism, x.
Past, an idea, 74 ; and present, differ
in more than degree, 175 ; essen
tially virtual, 173 ; that which
acts no longer, 74 ; has ceased to
be useful, 193 ; how stored up, 87 ;
survival of, 193 ; survives in two
forms, 87.
Past states, synthesized in char
acter, 1 88.
Pathology, evidence from, 133.
Perception, always full of memory
images, 170 ; always occupies some
duration, 25 ; and affection, dif
ference between, 53 ; and matter,
vii ; and matter, kinship of, 292 ;
and memory, difference between,
71 ; and memory, differ in kind,
75 ; and memory-image, not
things but a progress, 162 ; and
memory, interpenetrate, 71 ; and
memory point to action, 302 ; and
space, 23 ; a question addressed
to motor activity, 42 ; attention
and memory, relations of, 120 ff. ;
attentive, a reflexion, 124 ; centres
of, 1 60 ; directed towards action,
21 ; displays virtual action, 8 ;
distinct, brought about by two
opposite currents, 163 ; gives us
thintrs-in-themselves, 303 ; im
personal, 25 ; less objective in fact
than in theory, 70 ; limitation of,
34 ; means indeterminate action,
22 ; mixed character of, 270 ;
never without affection, 59 ; of
invidual objects, not primary, 205 :
of matter, definition of, 8 ; of
INDEX
matter, discontinuous, 47 ; of
things, of utilitarian origin, 206 ,
primary, a discernment of the use
ful, 206 ; pure, 26, 64 ; pure, an
intuition of reality, 84 ; pure, a
system of nascent acts, 74 ; pure,
its reference to matter, 77 ; pure,
lowest degree of mind, 297 ; pure,
theory of, 69 ; reflective, is a circuit,
126 ; subjectivity of, 75 ; varies
with cerebral vibrations, 12.
Perceptive fibres, centrifugal, 125.
Permanence and change, 260.
Personality, dilatation of, xiv ; dis
eases of, 229 ; division of, 229 ;
present undivided in perception,
215.
Philosophy, the method of, 239.
Photography, mental, and subcon-
sciousness, 101.
Phrases and words, 148.
Physical and mental, the, not mere
duplicates, 300.
Physical exercise, how learnt, 136.
Pillon, 105 note, 107 note.
Place, diversity of , not absolute, 256;
every, relative, 256.
Plane, of action, 217 ; of dream, 218.
Presence and representation, 27.
Present, at once sensation and move
ment, 177; definition of, 193;
ideal, 176 ; ideo-motor, 74 ; is
consciousness of the body, 177 ;
is sensori-motor, 177 ; materiality
of our life, 177 ; real, 176 ; that
which is acting, 74 ; unique for
each moment, 177.
Present moment, how constituted,
178.
Progress of the idea, 154.
Psychasthenic disease, how explained,
xv.
Psychic blindness, 108, in ; and
deafness, 132 ; as a disturbance of
motor habits, 115 ; does not hinder
seeing, 161 ; two kinds of, 115.
Psychic life, the normal, 219 ; funda
mental law of, 233.
Psychical states, wider than cerebral
states, xiii ; have a practical end,
320 ; unconscious, 181.
Psychology and metaphysics, relation
of, xv.
Pupin, 200 note.
Pure memory and the memory-image,
170.
Qualities, in consciousness, and move
ments in space, 267 ; of different
orders, share in extensity, 282.
Quality, and our own duration, 271 ;
and quantity, 235, 325 ; sensible,
and space, 282 ; suggests some
thing other than sensation, 271.
Quantity and quality, 235, 325.
Rabier, 106 note.
Ravaisson, 232 note.
Reaction, immediate and delayed, 22.
Reading, a work of divination, 126;
mechanism of, 125.
Realism, atomistic, 283 ; Kantian,
307 ; makes perception an accident,
16 ; ordinary, 287.
Realism and idealism, viii, 12, 73;
their common postulate, 283.
Realist, the, starts from the universe,
14.
Realists and idealists, xvi ; views of
universe, 53.
Reality, every, has a relation with
consciousness, 304 ; what it con
sists in for us, 189.
Recognition, and attention, 119 ;
animal, 93 ; attentive,*! 1 8 ; atten
tive, a circuit, 145 ; automatic,
118 ; basis of, a motor pheno
menon, no ; bodily, 109 ; by
memory-images, 118 ; commonly
acted before it is thought, 113;
diseases of, 115 ; erroneous theories
of, 107 ; essential process of, not
centripetal but centrifugal, 168 ;
how constituted, 87 ; in general,
105 ; intellectual, 145 ; of images,
86 ; of words, 133 ; process of, 316.
Recollection, spontaneous, perfect
from the outset, 95.
Recollections, disappearance of, 149.
Region of images, 165.
Relativity of knowledge, 241.
Repetition, addressed to the intelli
gence of the body, 137.
Representation, at first impersonal,
43 ; image and thing, vii ; less
than existence, 27 ; measure of
possible action, 30 ; of the universe,
4 ; of things, reflected by free
dom, 29 ; unconscious, 183 ; use
of word, 3 note.
Resemblance, 202* ; and difference,
209.
Rhythm, of our consciousness, 272.
Ribot, in, 121, 161, 200 note; his
law, 150.
Rieger, 149 note.
Robertson, 99 note.
Romberg, 141.
Rouillard, 201 note.
Schumann, 100 note.
Schwartz, 51 note.
Science, and consciousness, 12 ;
and universal continuity, 260.
INDEX
339
Self, the normal, 212.
Sensation, localized and extended,
180 ; supposed unextended, 51.
Sensations, order and co-existence of,
165 ; tactile and visual, 287 ff.
Sense, good, 198.
Senses, data of, 259 ; education of, 45.
Sensori-motor system, 225.
Serieux, 142 note.
Shaw, 161 note.
Shock, effect of, 150, 224.
Sight, and the perception of exten
sity, 286.
Similarity and contiguity, associa
tions of, 212 ff.
Skwortzoff, 157 note.
Sleep, and present reality, 227 ; its
effect on memory, 199.
Smith, W. G., 100 note.
Sommer, 101 note, 151 note, 158 note.
Soul and body, their relation, x ;
union of, 234.
Sounds, and rhythm of movement,
269.
Soury, 162.
Space, abstract, 273 ; and sensible
quality, 282 ; and time, homogen
eous, not properties of things, 280 ;
artificial, and extension, 244 ;
conceived, extensity perceived,
245 ; homogeneous, a diagram,
293 ; homogeneous, and concrete
extensity, 278 ; homogeneous and
the new hypothesis, 308 ; the
symbol of fixity, 289 ; the symbol
of infinite divisibility, 289.
Spamer, 141 note.
Specific energy of the nerves, 49.
Speculation, influenced by habits
formed in action, xvii.
Speech, mechanism of, 139 ; to hear
it intelligently, 153.
Spencer, 161 note.
Spirit, an independent reality, 82 ;
life of, how limited, 233.
Spirit and matter, reciprocal action
of, 325 ; transition between, 295.
Spiritualism, error of in relation to
matter, 79 ; use of word, 78 note.
Stadium, The, of Zeno, 252.
Starr, Allen, in note.
States, psychical, have a practical
end, 320 ; strong and weak, 173,
Strieker, 144.
Subject and object, their distinction
and union, 77-
Subjectivity, a kind of contraction of
the real, 25 ; of affective states, 52.
Suggestions, with point de repere, 151.
Sully, 107 note, 121 note.
Survival, of the past, 193.
Symbols, mathematical, express only
distances, not real movement, 355
Tension, 327 ; idea of, 237 ; in
memory, 219, 221 ; psychic, xv.
Thing, image, and representation, vii.
Things, and their environment, 278.
Time and Free Will, 242 note, 268
note, 286 note.
Time, homogeneous, an idol of lan
guage, 274-
Time and space, homogeneous, not
properties of things, 280 ; the
unconscious in relation to, 186.
Tones, of mental life, 221.
Toxic drugs, effect of, 228.
Trajectory, of a moving body, 246.
Unconscious mental states, 183 ;
representation, 183.
Unconscious, the, in relation to time
and space, 186 ; mechanism of , 72 ;
problem of, 183.
Unity, the factitious, 239 ; the living,
239.
Valentin, 149 note.
Van der Waals, 263 note.
Verbal images, discontinuous, 159.
Verbs, why retained longest, in
aphasia, 152.
Veridical hallucinations, 73.
Vertebrates, nervous system in, 17,
Virtual image and virtual sensation,
169.
Visual image, 99.
Voisin, 141.
Voluntary, the, and the automatic,
US-
Vortex rings, 265.
Ward, James, 106 note, 120 note,
289 note.
Wemicke, 149 note, 156 note.
Wilbrand, 108.
Winslow, Forbes, 141, 150 note, 204
note.
Word blindness and deafness, 132 ;
two kinds of, 133.
Word deafness, and motor aphasia,
138 ; with retention of acoustic
memory, 140.
Words, and phrases, 148 ; auditory
memory of, 147-
World, material, not part of the
brain, 4.
Wundt, 121 note, 152 note ; bis
theory of perception, 164.
Wysman, 157 note.
Zeno, paradoxes of, 250 ff.
Zones of indetermination, 33.
Bergson, Henri. B
2430
Matter and memory. ,B4
M35
