Bergson and His Philosophy Part 2

The problem at issue between Realists and Idealists turns on the fact that there are two systems of images in existence. "Here is a system of images which I term 'my perception of the universe,' and which may be entirely altered by a very slight change in the privileged image--my body. This image occupies the centre. By it all 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 proportion to the cause; this is what I term the 'universe.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 12 (Fr.

p. 10).] The question is, "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?" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 13 (Fr. p. 11).] We may style one the system of science, the other the system of consciousness. Now, Realism and Idealism are both incapable of explaining why there are two such systems at all. Subjective Idealism derives the system of science from that of consciousness, while materialistic Realism derives the system of consciousness from that of science. They have, however, this common meeting-place, that they both regard Perception as speculative in character--for each of them "to perceive" is to "know." Now this is just the postulate which Bergson disputes. The office of perception, according to him, is to give us, not knowledge, but the conditions necessary for action.[Footnote: Notre croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1900), p. 658.] A little examination shows us that distance stands for the degree in which other bodies are protected, as it were, against the action of my body against them, and equally too for the degree in which my body is protected from them.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance in L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 117-161 (Mind-Energy), or Revue philosophique, 1908, pp. 561-593.] Perception is utilitarian in character and has reference to bodily action, and we detach from all the images coming to us those which interest us practically.

Bergson then examines the physiological aspects of the perceptual process. Beginning with reflex actions and the development of the nervous system, he goes on to discuss the functions of the spinal cord and the brain. He finds in regard to these last two that "there is 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 movements the stimulation received, the brain prolongs into reactions which are merely nascent, but in the one case as in the other, the function of the nerve substance is to conduct, to co-ordinate, or to inhibit movements.[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 10-11 (Fr. p. 9).] As we rise in the organic series we find a division of physiological labour. Nerve cells appear, are diversified and 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 received 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 prepares 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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 17-18 (Fr. p. 15).] The brain is no more than a kind of central telephone exchange, its office is to allow communication or to delay it. It adds nothing to what it receives, it is simply a centre where perceptions get into touch with motor mechanisms. Sometimes the function of the brain is to conduct the movement received to a chosen organ of reaction, while at other times it opens to the movement the totality of the motor tracks. The brain appears as an instrument of a.n.a.lysis in regard to movements received by it, but an instrument of selection in regard to the movements executed. In either case, its office is limited to the transmission and division of movements. In the lower organisms, stimulation takes the form of immediate contact. For example, a jelly-fish feels a danger when anything touches it, and reacts immediately. The more immediate the reaction has to be, the more it resembles simple contact. Higher up the scale, sight and hearing enable the individual to enter into relation with a greater number of objects and with objects at a distance. This gives rise to an amount of uncertainty, "a zone of indetermination," where hesitation and choice come into play. Hence, says Bergson: "Perception is master of s.p.a.ce in the exact measure in which action is master of time." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 23 (Fr. p. 19).]

In the paper read before the First International Congress of Philosophy at Paris in 1900, on Our Belief in the Law of Causality,[Footnote: Notre croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale, Sept., 1900, pp. 655-660).] Bergson showed that it has its root in the co-ordination of our tactile impressions with our visual impressions.

This co-ordination becomes a continuity which generates motor habits or tendencies to action.

There now comes up for consideration the question as to why this relation of the organism, to more or less distinct objects, takes the particular form of conscious perception, and further, why does everything happen as if this consciousness were born of the internal movements of the cerebral substance? To answer this question, we must turn to perceptual processes, as these occur in our everyday life. We find at once that "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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 24 (Fr. p. 20).] To such an extent is this true that the immediate data of perception serve as a sign to bring much more to the mind. Psychological experiments have conclusively proved that we never actually perceive all that we imagine to be there. Hence arise illusions, examples of which may be easily thought of--incorrect proof-reading is one, while another common one is the mistake of taking one person for another because of some similarity of dress. What is actually perceived is but a fraction of what we are looking at and acts normally as a suggestion for the whole. Now, although it is true that, in practice, Perception and Memory are never found absolutely separate in their purity, yet it is necessary to distinguish them from one another absolutely in any investigation of a psychological nature. If, instead of a perception impregnated with memory-images, nothing survived from the past, then we should have "pure" perception, not coloured by anything in the individual's past history, and so a kind of impersonal perception. However unreal it may seem, such a perception is at the root of our knowledge of things and individual accidents are merely grafted on to this impersonal or "pure"

perception. Just because philosophers have overlooked it, and because they have failed to distinguish it from that which memory contributes to it, they have regarded Perception as a kind of interior and subjective vision, differing from Memory only by its greater intensity and not differing in nature. In reality, however, Perception and Memory differ fundamentally.

Our conscious perception is just our power of choice, reflected from things as though by a mirror, so that representation arises from the omission of that in the totality of matter which has no bearing on our needs and consequently no interest for us. "There is for images merely a difference of degree and not of kind between 'being' and 'being consciously perceived.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 30 (Fr. p.

25).] Consciousness--in regard to external perception--is explained by this indeterminateness and this choice. "But there is in this necessary poverty of conscious perception, something that is positive, that foretells spirit; it is, in the etymological sense of the word, discernment.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 31 (Fr. p. 26).] The chief difficulty in dealing with the problems of Perception, is to explain "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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 34 (Fr. p.

29).] We only make an insuperable difficulty if we imagine Perception to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception--a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process. "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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tute perception, includes precisely all the points of the universe which these movements could affect, conscious perception and cerebral movement are in strict correspondence. The reciprocal dependence of these two terms is therefore simply due to the fact that both are functions of a third, which is the indetermination of the Will." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 35 (Fr. p. 29).]

Moreover, we must recognize that the image is formed and perceived in the object, not in the brain, even although it would seem that rays of light coming from a point P are perceived along the path of the sensori-motor processes in the brain and are afterwards projected into P. There is not, however, an unextended image which forms itself in consciousness and then projects itself into the position P. Really, the point P, and the rays which it emits, together with the retina and nervous elements affected in the process of perception, all form a single whole. The point P is an indispensable factor in this whole and it is really in P and not anywhere else that the image of P is formed and perceived.[Footnote: Cf. Matter and Memory, p. 37 (Fr p. 31), also paper ent.i.tled Notre croyance a la loi de causalite in the Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1900, p. 658.]

In the field of "pure" perception, that is to say, perception unadulterated by the addition of memory-images, there can arise no image without an object. "Sensation is essentially due to what is actually present." [Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, p. 579 of Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908; also L'Energie spirituelle, p. 141 (Mind-Energy).] Exactly how external stimuli, such as rays of a certain speed and length, come to give us a certain image, e.g., the sensation "red" or the sound of "middle C," we shall never understand.

"No trace of the movements themselves can be actually perceived in the sensation which translates them." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp.

34-35 (Fr. p. 26).] We only make trouble by regarding sensations in an isolated manner and attempting to construct Perception from them. "Our sensations are to our perceptions, that which the real action of our body is to its possible or virtual action." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 58 (Fr. p. 48).] Thus, everything happens as if the external images were reflected by our body into surrounding s.p.a.ce. This is why the surface of the body, which forms the common limit of the external and internal, is the only portion of s.p.a.ce which is both perceived and felt. Just as external objects are perceived by me where they are, in themselves and not in me, so my affective states (e.g. pains--which are local, unavailing efforts) are experienced where they occur, in my body.

Consider the system of images which we term the "external world." My body is one of them and around it is grouped the representation, i.e., its eventual influence on others. Within it occurs affection, i.e., its actual effort upon itself. It is because of this distinction between images and sensations that we affirm that the totality of perceived images subsists, even if our body disappears, whereas we cannot annihilate our body without destroying our sensations. In practice, our "pure" perception is adulterated with affection, as well as with memories. To understand Perception, however, we must--as previously insisted upon--study it with reference to action. It is false to suppose "that perception and sensation exist for their own sake; the philosopher ascribes to them an entirely speculative function," [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 311 (Fr p. 261).] a proceeding which gives rise to the fallacies of Realism and Idealism.

It has been said that the choice of perceptions from among images in general is the effect of a "discernment" which foreshadows spirit. But to touch the reality of spirit, we must place ourselves at the point where an individual consciousness continues and retains the past in a present, enriched by it.[Footnote: See Chapter VI on la duree.

Time--True and False.] Perception we never meet in its pure state; it is always mingled with memories. The rose has a different scent for you from that which it has for me, just because the scent of the rose bears with it all the memories of all the roses we have ever experienced, each of us individually.[Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp. 161-162 (Fr.

p. 124).] Memory, however mingled with Perception, is nevertheless fundamentally different in character.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 580; also L'Effort intellectuel, Revue philosophique, Jan., 1902, p. 23; L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 141 and 197 (Mind-Energy).] "When we pa.s.s from 'pure' Perception to Memory, we definitely abandon matter for spirit." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 313 (Fr. p. 263).]

CHAPTER IV

MEMORY

Definition--Two forms--memorizing power related to habit; recalling power or "pure" memory. Is memory a function of the brain?--Pathological Phenomena. Memory something other than merely a function of the brain.

The "Box" theory--Memory records everything--Dreams--The well-balanced mind--Memory a manifestation of spirit.

The importance of Memory is recognized by all persons--whether psychologists or not. At the present time there is a growing interest in systems of memory-training offered to the public, which aim at mental efficiency as a means to success in life. Indeed, from the tone of some advertis.e.m.e.nts seen in the press, one might be prompted to think that Memory itself was the sole factor determining success in either a professional or a business career. Yet, although we are likely to regard this as a somewhat exaggerated statement, nevertheless we cannot deny the very great importance of the power of Memory. How often, in everyday life, we hear people excuse themselves by remarking "My memory failed me" or "played me false" or, more bluntly, "I forgot all about that."

Without doubt, Memory is a most vital factor, though not the only one in mental efficiency.[Footnote: The true ideal of mental efficiency must include power of Will as well as of Memory.] It is an element in mental life which puzzles both the specialist in psychology and the layman.

"What is this wonderfully subtle power of mind?" "How do we remember?"

Even the mind, untrained in psychological investigation, cannot help asking such questions in moments of reflection; but for the psychologist they are questions of very vital significance in his science. For Bergson, as psychologist, Memory is naturally, a subject of great importance. We must note, however, that for Bergson, as metaphysician, it plays an even more important role, since his study of Memory and conclusions as to its nature lead him on to a discussion of the relation of soul and body, spirit and matter. His second large work, which appeared in 1896, bears the t.i.tle Matiere et Memoire. For him, Memory is a pivot on which turns a whole scheme of relations.h.i.+ps--material and spiritual. He wrote in 1910 a new introduction for the English Translation of this work. He there says that "among all the facts capable of throwing light on the psycho-physiological relation, those which concern Memory, whether in the normal or the pathological state, hold a privileged position." [Footnote: Introduction to Matter and Memory, p. xii.] Let us then, prior to pa.s.sing on to the consideration of the problem of the relation of soul and body, examine what Bergson has to say on the subject of Memory.

At the outset, we may define Memory as the return to consciousness of some experience, accompanied by the awareness that it has been present earlier at a definite time and place.[Footnote: The above is to be taken as a definition of the normal memory. In a subtle psychological a.n.a.lysis in the paper ent.i.tled Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance in L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 117-161 (Mind-Energy), Bergson considers cases of an abnormal or fict.i.tious memory, coinciding with perception in rather a strange manner. This does not, however, affect the validity of the above definition.] Bergson first of all draws attention to a distinction between two different forms of Memory, the nature of which will be best brought out by considering two examples. We are fond of giving to children or young persons at school selections from the plays of Shakespeare, "to be learned by heart," as we say. We praise the boy or girl who can repeat a long pa.s.sage perfectly, and we regard that scholar as gifted with a good memory. To ill.u.s.trate the second type of case, suppose a question to be put to that boy asking him what he saw on the last half-holiday when he took a ramble in the country. He may, or may not, be able to tell us much of his adventures on that occasion, for whatever he can recall is due to a mental operation of a different character from that which enabled him to learn his lesson. There is here no question of learning by rote, of memorizing, but of capacity to recall to mind a past experience. The boy who is clever at memorizing a pa.s.sage from Shakespeare may not have a good memory at all for recalling past events. To understand why this is so we must examine these two forms of Memory more closely and refer to Bergson's own words: "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 repet.i.tion 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. 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 imprinted 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 learned by heart, has ALL the marks of a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repet.i.tion of the same effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a 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, has NONE of the marks of a habit, it is like an event in my life; it is a case of spontaneous recollection as distinct from mere learnt recollection. Now a learnt recollection pa.s.ses out of time in the measure that the lesson is better known; it becomes more and more impersonal, more and more foreign to our past life." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 89-90 (Fr. pp. 75-76).] This quotation makes clear that of these two forms of Memory, it is the power of spontaneous recollection which is Memory par excellence and const.i.tutes "real" Memory. The other, to which psychologists usually have devoted most of their attention in discussing the problem of Memory, is habit interpreted as Memory, rather than Memory itself.

Having thus made clear this valuable and fundamental distinction--"one of the best things in Bergson" [Footnote: Bertrand Russell's remark in his Philosophy of Bergson, p. 7.]--and having shown that in practical life the automatic memory necessarily plays an important part, often inhibiting "pure" Memory, Bergson proceeds to examine and criticize certain views of Memory itself, and endeavours finally to demonstrate to us what he himself considers it to be.

He takes up the cudgels to attack the view which aims at blending Memory with Perception, as being of like kind. Memory, he argues, must be distinguished from Perception, however much we admit (and rightly) that memories enter into and colour all our perceptions. They are quite different in their nature. A remembrance is the representation of an absent object. We distinguish between hearing a faint tap at the door, and the faint memory of a loud one. We cannot admit the validity of the statement that there is only a difference of intensity between Perception and Recollection. "As our perception of a present object is something of that object itself, our representation of the absent object, as in Memory, must be a phenomenon of quite other order than Perception, since between presence and absence there are no degrees, no intermediate stages." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 315 (Fr. p. 264).]

If we maintain that recollection is merely a weakened form of Perception we must note the consequences of such a thesis. "If recollection is only a weakened Perception, inversely, Perception must be something 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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 318 (Fr.

p. 267).] The maintenance of such a doctrine involves the further remarkable contention that "we construct matter from our own interior states and that perception is only a true hallucination." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p 318 (Fr. p. 267).] Such a theory will not harmonize with the experienced difference between Perceptions and Memories.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 568; also L'Energie spirituelle (Mind-Energy).] We do not mistake the perception of a slight sound for the recollection of a loud noise, as has already been remarked. The consciousness of a recollection "never occurs as a weak state which we try to relegate to the past so soon as we become aware of its weakness.

How indeed, unless we already possess 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 experience more distinct?" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 319 (Fr. p.

268).] The truth is that Memory does not consist in a regression from the present into the past, but on the contrary, in a progress from the past to the present. Memory is radically distinct from Perception, in its character.

Bergson then pa.s.ses on to discuss other views of Memory, and in particular, those which deal with the nature of Memory and its relation to the brain. It is stated dogmatically by some that Memory is a function of the brain. Others claim, in opposition to this, that Memory is something other than a function of the brain. Between two such statements as these, compromise or reconciliation is obviously impossible. It is then for experience to decide between these two conflicting views. This empirical appeal Bergson does not s.h.i.+rk. He has made a most comprehensive and intensive study of pathological phenomena relating to the mental malady known as aphasia. This particular type of disorder belongs to a whole cla.s.s of mental diseases known as amnesia.

Now amnesia (in Greek, "forgetfulness") is literally any loss or defect of the Memory. Aphasia (in Greek "absence of speech") is a total or partial loss of the power of speech, either in its spoken or written form. The term covers the loss of the power of expression by spoken words, but is often extended to include both word-deafness, i.e., the misunderstanding of what is said, and word-blindness--the inability to read words. An inability to execute the movements necessary to express oneself, either by gesture, writing, or speech, is styled "motor aphasia," to distinguish it from the inability to understand familiar gestures and written or spoken words, which is known as "sensory-aphasia." The commonest causes of this disease are lesions, affecting the special nerve centres, due to haemorrhage or the development of tumours, being in the one case rapid, in the other a gradual development. Of course any severe excitement, fright or illness, involving a disturbance of the normal circulation in the cerebral centres, may produce asphasia. During the war, it has been one of the afflictions of a large number of the victims of "sh.e.l.l-shock." But, whatever be the cause, the patient is reduced mentally to an elementary state, resembling that of a child, and needs re-educating in the elements of language.

Now, from his careful study of the pathological phenomena, manifested in these cases, Bergson draws some very important conclusions in regard to the nature of Memory and its relation to the brain. In 1896, when he brought out his work Matiere et Memoire, in Paris, the general view was against his conclusions and his opinions were ridiculed. By 1910, a marked change had come about and he was able to refer to this in the new introduction.[Footnote: See Bibliography, p. 158.] His view was no longer considered paradoxical. The conception of aphasia, once cla.s.sical, universally admitted, believed to be unshakeable, had been considerably shaken in that period of fourteen years. Localization, and reference to centres would not, it was found, explain things sufficiently.[Footnote: The work of Pierre Janet was largely influential also in bringing about this change of view.] This involved a too rigid and mechanical conception of the brain as a mere "box," and Bergson attacks it very forcibly under the name of "the box theory." "All the arguments," he says, "from fact which may be invoked in favour of a probable acc.u.mulation of memories in the cortical substance, are drawn from local disorders of memory. But if recollections were really deposited in the brain, to definite gaps in memory characteristic lesions 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 definite recollections are, as it were, torn from their seat, but that it is the whole faculty of remembering 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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 315 (Fr. pp. 264-265).] But as it is a fact that the past survives under two distinct forms, viz., "motor mechanisms" and "independent recollections," we find that this explains 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, or by any logical relations.h.i.+p to one another, 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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p.

266).] Going even further than this, by the study of the recognition of words, and of sensory-aphasia, Bergson shows that "recognition is in no way affected by a mechanical awakening of memories that are asleep in the brain. It implies, on the contrary, a more or less high degree of tension in consciousness, which goes to fetch pure recollections in pure memory, in order to materialize them progressively, by contact with the present perception." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p. 266).]

In the face of all this ma.s.s of evidence and thoroughness of argument which Bergson brings forward, we are led to conclude that Memory is indeed something other than a function of the brain. Criticizing Wundt's view,[Footnote: As expressed in his Grundzuge der physiologische psychologie, vol. I., pp. 320-327. See Matter and Memory, p. 164 (Fr.

p. 137).]Bergson contends that no trace of an image can remain in the substance of the brain and no centre of apperception can exist. "There is not in the brain a region in which memories congeal and acc.u.mulate.

The alleged destruction of memories by an injury to the brain is but a break in the continuous progress by which they actualize themselves." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 160 (Fr. p. 134).] It is then futile to ask in what spot past memories are stored. To look for them in any place would be as meaningless as asking to see traces of the telephonic message upon the telephone wire.

"Memory," it has been said, "is a faculty which loses nothing and records everything." [Footnote: Ball, quoted by Rouillard, Les Amnesies, Paris, 1885, p. 25; Matter and Memory, p. 201 (Fr. p. 168).] This is only too true, although normally we do not recognize it. But we can never be sure that we have absolutely forgotten anything. Illness, producing delirium, may provoke us to speak of things we had thought were gone beyond recall and which perhaps we even wish were beyond recall. A somnambulistic state or even a dream may show us memory extending far further back than we could ordinarily imagine. The facing of death in battle, we know, recalls to many, with extreme vividness, scenes of early childhood which they had deemed long since forgotten.

"There is nothing," says Bergson, "more instructive in this regard than what happens 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, pa.s.sing before him with great rapidity, with their smallest circ.u.mstances, and in the very order in which they occurred." [Footnote: La Perception du Changement, pp.

30-31, and Matter and Memory, p 200 (Fr p 168).] Hence we can never be absolutely sure that we have forgotten anything although at any given time we may be unable to recall it to mind. There is an unconscious memory.[Footnote: Cf. Samuel Butler's Unconscious Memory.] Speaking of the profound and yet undeniable reality of the unconscious, Bergson says,[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp 181-182 (Fr. pp. 152-153).

See also Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 592, and L'Energie spirituelle, pp.

159-161 (Mind-Energy).] "Our unwillingness to conceive unconscious 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, consciousness may not be the synonym of existence, but only of real action or of immediate efficacy; limiting thus the meaning of the term, we shall have less difficulty in representing to ourselves 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 have no more right to say that the past effaces itself as soon as perceived than to suppose that material objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them. Memory, to use a geometrical ill.u.s.tration which Bergson himself employs, comes into action like the point of a cone pressing against a plane. The plane denotes the present need, particularly in relation to bodily action, while the cone stands for all our total past. Much of this past, indeed most of it, only endures as unconscious Memory, but it is always capable of coming to the apex of the cone, i.e., coming into consciousness. So we may say that there are different planes of Memory, conic sections, if we keep up the original metaphor, and the largest of these contains all our past. This may be well described as "the plane of dream." [Footnote: See Matter and Memory, p. 222 (Fr. p. 186) and the paper L'Effort intellectuel, Revue philosophique, Jan., 1902, pp. 2 and 25, L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 165 and 199 (Mind-Energy).]

This connexion of Memory with dreams is more fully brought out by Bergson in his lecture before the Inst.i.tut psychologique international, five years after the publication of Matiere et Memoire, ent.i.tled Le Reve. [Footnote: Delivered March 26, 1901. See Bibliography, p. 153.]

The following is a brief summary of the view there set forth. Memories, and only memories, weave the web of our dreams. They are "such stuff as dreams are made on." Often we do not recognize them. They may be very old memories, forgotten during waking hours, drawn from the most obscure depths of our past, or memories of objects we have perceived distractedly, almost unconsciously, while awake. They may be fragments of broken memories, composing an incoherent and unrecognizable whole.

In a waking state our memories are closely connected with our present situation (unless we be given to day-dreams!). In an animal memory serves to recall to him the advantageous or injurious consequences which have formerly arisen in a like situation, and so aids his present action. In man, memory forms a solid whole, a pyramid whose point is inserted precisely into our present action. But behind the memories which are involved in our occupations, there are others, thousands of others, stored below the scene illuminated by consciousness. "Yes, I believe indeed," says Bergson, "that all our past life is there, preserved even to the most infinitesimal details, and that we forget nothing and that all that we have ever felt, perceived, thought, willed, from the first awakening of our consciousness, survives indestructibly."

[Footnote: Dreams, p. 37. For this discussion in full, see pages 34-39, or see L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 100-103 (Mind-Energy).] Of course, in action I have something else to do than occupy myself with these.

But suppose I become disinterested in present action--that I fall asleep--then the obstacle (my attention to action) removed, these memories try to raise the trap-door--they all want to get through. From the mult.i.tude which are called, which will be chosen? When I was awake, only those were admitted which bore on the present situation. Now, in sleep, more vague images occupy my vision, more indecisive sounds reach my ear, more indistinct touches come to my body, and more vague sensations come from my internal organs. Hence those memories which can a.s.similate themselves to some element in this vague ma.s.s of very indistinct sensations manage to get through. When such union is effected, between memory and sensation, we have a dream.

In order that a recollection should be brought to mind, it is necessary that it should descend from the height of pure memory to the precise point where action is taking place. Such a power is the mark of the well-balanced mind, pursuing a via media between impulsiveness on the one hand, and dreaminess on the other. "The characteristic of the man of action," says Bergson in this connexion, "is the prompt.i.tude with which he summons to the help of a given situation all the memories which have reference to it. 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 impulse. 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 energetic enough to resist all other appeal. Good sense or practical sense, is probably nothing but this." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 198 (Fr. pp.

166-167).]

In the paper L'Effort intellectuel, contributed in 1902 to the Revue philosophique, and now reprinted in L'Energie spirituelle,[Footnote: Pp. 163-202. See also Mind-Energy.]Bergson gives an a.n.a.lysis of what is involved in intellectual effort. There is at first, he shows, something conceived quite generally, an idea vague and abstract, a schema which has to be completed by distinct images. In thought there is a movement of the mind from the plane of the schema to the plane of the concrete image. Various images endeavour to fit themselves into the schema, or the schema may adapt itself to the reception of the images. These double efforts to secure adaptation and cooperation may both encounter resistance from the other, a situation which is known to us as hesitation, accompanied by the awareness of obstacles, thus involving intellectual effort.

Memory then, Bergson wishes us to realize, in response to his treatment of it, is no mere function of the brain; it is something infinitely more subtle, infinitely more elusive, and more wondrous. Our memories are not stored in the brain like letters in a filing cabinet, and all our past survives indestructibly as Memory, even though in the form of unconscious memory. We must recognize Memory to be a spiritual fact and so regard it as a pivot on which turn many discussions of vital importance when we come to investigate the problem of the relation of soul and body. For "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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 81 (Fr. p. 68).]

"Memory," he would remind us finally, "is just the intersection of mind and matter." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, Introduction, p. xii.] "A remembrance cannot 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." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 320 (Fr. p. 268).]

CHAPTER V

THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY

The hypothesis of Psycho-physical Parallelism--Not to be accepted uncritically--Bergson opposes it, and shows the hypothesis to rest on a confusion of terms. Bergson against Epiphenomenalism--Soul-life unique and wider than the brain--Telepathy, subconscious action and psychical research--Souls and survival.

For philosophy in general, and for psychology in particular, the problem of the relation of soul and body has prime significance, and moreover, it is a problem with which each of us is acquainted intimately and practically, even if we know little or nothing of the academic discussions, or of the technical terms representing various views. It is very frequently the terminology which turns the plain man away from the consideration of philosophical problems; but he has some conception, however crude it may be, of his soul or his mind and of his body.

These terms are familiar to him, but the sight of a phrase like "psycho-physical parallelism" rather daunts him. Really, it stands for quite a simple thing, and is just the official label used to designate the theory commonly held by scientific men of all kinds, to describe the relation of soul and body. Put more precisely, it is just the a.s.sertion that brain and consciousness work on parallel lines.