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 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 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 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 ffsifty11*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 perception and memory a difference of degree — perceptions being then supposed to throw mem- Bnt memory OI"ies 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, sensorimotor. our present This is to saY that mY present conmateriality o! S^S m *ne COnSClOUSneSS that I have i?sUunique ** °^ mv body. Having extension in space, moment o! my body experiences sensations and at duration. faG same time executes movements.
N 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 quasiinstantaneous 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.
ment of the In our view the difference is radical.
past survives, _.., ~.
is essentially My actual sensations occupy definite pordetached *,, 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 sensaborrows 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, therefore pure we will confine ourselves to the remark memory is latent and that our unwillingness to conceive ununconscious.. 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 scions mental of the unconscious. The idea of an unstatesingen-...• • -, -. •, erai. Artifl- conscious representation is clear, despite raised round current prejudice; we may even say the uncon™0 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, 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 halfformed 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, 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 obobject, obscure...in the case of ject, so that distance in space meaan 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