Matter and memory
Bergson, Henri, 1859-1941
•Ufe w*». $fc f- 4/2.. <3& NY PUBLIC L BHAHY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES 3 3333 05955 8391 IKS v-y i ' -*,-* tisa HENRI BERGSON MATTER AND MEMORY \ / Authorised Translation by NANCY MARGARET PAUL and W. SCOTT PALMER LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. NEW YORK: HUMANITIES PRESS, INC. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1 91 1 SECOND IMPRESSION IQI2 THIRD IMPRESSION 1 91 3 FOURTH IMPRESSION 1 919 FIFTH IMPRESSION 1929 SIXTH IMPRESSION I95O SEVENTH IMPRESSION 1962 EIGHTH IMPRESSION 1970 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers. ISBN 004 19400 6 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAI N BYCOMPTONPRINTINGLTD LONDON AND AYLESBURY B-l TRANSLATORS' NOTE THIS translation of Monsieur Bergson's Mati&rc et 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 XI xii 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, which 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 Xlll 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 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 XV 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- XVI 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 We have laid stress on this particular point in an essay on " Lc paralogisme psycho-physiologique " (Revue de Mela- physique ct dc Morale, Nov., 1904). INTRODUCTION Xvii 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 XV111 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 XIX 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, UAphasie de Broca, Paris, 1908 ; especially Chapter VII. Cf. the work of Professor Pierre Marie. 2 P. Janet, Les obsessions et la Psychaslhenie, Paris, 1903 ; in particular pp. 474-502. XX 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 XXI 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 INTRODUCTION page xi I. Of the Selection of Images for Conscious Presentation. What our Body Means and Does 1-85 Real action and virtual action, 1-8; Rep- resentation, 8-14; Realism and Idealism, 14-17; The choice of images, 17-35; Rela- tion between representation and action, 35- 45; The image and reality, 45-51; The image and affective sensation, 51-55; Nature of affective sensation, 55-59; The image, apart from sensation, 59-62 ; Natural ex- tension of images, 62-69; Pure perception, 69-73; Approach to the problem of matter, 73-81; Memory, 81-85. II. Of the Recognition of Images. Memory and Brain 86-169 The two forms of memory, 86-105; Move- ments and Recollections, 105-118; Recollec- tions and movements, 118-145; Realization of memories, 145-169. III. Of the Survival of Images. Memory and Mind 170-232 Pure memory, 170-176; What the present is, 176-181; The unconscious, 181-189; Exist- ence, 189-191; Relation of past and present, 191-200; Memory and general ideas, 201- 212; The Association of Ideas, 212-217; The plane of action and the plane of dream, 217-220; The different planes of conscious- ness, 220-225; Attention to life, 225-226; Mental equilibrium, 227-230; The Office of the body, 231-232. xxiii CONTENTS IV. The Delimiting and Fixing of Images. Perception and Matter. Soul and Body 233-298 The problem of dualism, 233-238; Descrip- tion of the Method, 238-245; Indivisibility of movement, 246-253; Real movement, 254-259; Perception and matter, 259-267; Duration and tension, 267-277; Extensity and extension, 277-291; Soul and body, 291-298. Summary and Conclusion 299-332 Index 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 in 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 unique , .... ... . , T piace and by affections \ it is my body. 1 exa- function ol . , .. .... . , . , ., the living mine the conditions in which these 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 3 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__hoth 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 x 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 Yet the brain ii sensory nerves and propagated in the ±n^oiSf brain is an image too. If the image 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 often perception. (Translators' note.) 4 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP.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 hypofihesi 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 tne surrounding images. I see plainly receives and external images influence the image returns movements. that I call my body : they transmit movement to it. And I also see how this body 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 *he surrounding objects, it must occupy a privileged position in regard to them, for ^S a ru^e' anv image influences other of6choiceise images m a manner which is determined, poSe anc* 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, i 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, Perceptions , , point to all the afferent nerves of the cerebro- possibie 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 is trifugal nerves, with its nerve centres. w°ithemoetor I know that external objects make in Xth'consSoua tne afferent 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 B IO 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, i REPRESENTATION II 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 sum- SSot'Seate" cient 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. 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 ^ eg altered by a very slight change in fwoT stems a certain privileged image, — my body. to science and This image occupies the centre : by it to conscious- J ness. au the 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. 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, his 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. 