1 Brochard, La loi de similarite (Revue Philosophique, 1880, vol. ix, p. 258). M. Rabier shows himself also of this opinion in his Lemons de Philosophic, vol. i, Psychologie, pp. 187-192.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IO7 consists in the common element seized and disen gaged by the mind, there is a vague and in some sort objective resemblance, spread over the sur face of the images themselves, which might act perhaps like a physical cause of reciprocal attrac tion.1 And should we ask how it is, then, that we often recognize an object without being able to identify it with a former image, refuge is sought in the convenient hypothesis of cerebral tracks which coincide with each other, of cerebral movements made easier by practice,2 or of percep tive cells communicating with cells where memories are stored.8 In truth, all such theories of recog nition are bound to melt away, in the end, into physiological hypotheses of this kind. What they were aiming at, first, was to make all recog nition issue from a bringing together of per ception and memory; but experience stands over against them, testifying that in most cases recollection emerges only after the perception is recognized. So they are sooner or later forced to relegate to the brain, in the form of a combination between movements or of a connexion between cells, that which they had first declared to be an association of ideas; and to explain the 1 Pillon, loc. tit., p. 207. Cf. James Sully, The human Mind, London, 1892, vol. i, p. 331.
2 H off ding, Ueber Wiedererkennen, Association und •psychische Activitdt (Vierteljahresschrift /. wissenschaftlichc Philo sophic, 1889, p. 433.
8 Munk, Ueber die Functiontn der Grosshirnrwde. Berlin, 1881, p. 108 et seq.
fact of recognition, — very clear on our view — by the hypothesis, which seems to us very obscure, of a brain which stores up ideas.
But the fact is that the association of a perception with a memory is not enough to account for the process of recognition. For if recognition took place in this way, it would always be obliterated when the memory images had disappeared, and always happen when these images are retained. Psychic blindness, or the inability to recognize perceived objects, would, then, never occur without an inhibi tion of visual memory; and, above all, the inhibi tion of visual memory would invariably produce psychic blindness. But neither consequence is borne out by facts. In a case studied by Wilbrand,1 the patient could describe with her eyes shut the town she lived in and, in imagination, walk through its streets: yet, once in the street, she felt like a complete stranger; she recognized nothing and could not find her way. Facts of the same kind have been observed by Fr. Miiller 2 and Lissauer:3 the patients can summon up the mental picture of an object named to them; they describe it very well; but they cannot recognize it when it is shown to them. The retention, even the conscious retention, of a visual memory is, 1 Die Seelenblindheit als Herderscheinung, Wiesbaden, 1887, p. 56.
2 Ein Beitrag zur Kennlniss der Seelenblindheit (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, vol. xxiv, 1892.
8 Em Fall von Seelenblindheit (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, 1889).
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IOQ therefore, not enough for the recognition of a simi lar perception. Inversely, in Charcot's case, which has become the classic example of a complete eclipse of visual images,1 not all recognition of perceptions was obliterated. A careful study of the report of the case is conclusive on this point. No doubt the patient failed to recognize the streets and houses of his native town, to the extent of being unable to name them or to find his way about them; yet he knew that they were streets and houses. He no longer recognized his wife and chil dren; yet, when he saw them, he could say that this was a woman, that those were children. None of this would have been possible, had there been psychic blindness in the absolute sense of the word. A certain kind of recognition, then, which we shall need to analyse, was obliterated, not the general faculty of recognition. So we must conclude that not every recognition implies the intervention of a memory image; and, conversely, that we may still be able to call up such images when we have lost the power of identifying perceptions with them. What then is recognition, and how shall we define it?
There is, in the first place, if we carry the process to the extreme, an instantaneous recogni tion, of which the body is capable by itself, without the help of any explicit memory-image. It 1 Reported by Bernard, Un cas de suppression brusque et isolee de la vision mentale (Progres Medical, July 21, 1883).
IIO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n consists in action and not in representation, in one kind of For instance, I take a walk in a town fh°e°S0Sf seen then for the first time- At everY famiSiiarSuy0L street corner I hesitate, uncertain where nhesSCoT»cion8"! am g°mg- I am in doubt; and I meoto?rao-ed mean by this that alternatives are offered companiment. to my body, that my movement as a whole is discontinuous, that there is nothing in one attitude which foretells and prepares future atti tudes. Later, after prolonged sojourn in the town, I shall go about it mechanically, without having any distinct perception of the objects which I am passing. Now, between these two extremes, the one in which perception has not yet organized the definite movements which accompany it, and the other in which these accompanying movements are organized to a degree which renders perception useless, there is an intermediate state in which the object is perceived, yet provokes movements which are connected, continuous and called up by one another. I began by a state in which I distinguished only my perception; I shall end in a state in which I am hardly conscious of anything but automatism: in the interval there is a mixed state, a perception followed step by step by automatism just impending. Now, if the later perceptions differ from the first percep tion in the fact that they guide the body towards the appropriate mechanical reaction, if, on the other hand, those renewed perceptions appear to the mind under that special aspect which charac- CHAP n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES TIT terizes familiar or recognized perceptions, must we not assume that the consciousness of a wellregulated motor accompaniment, of an organized motor reaction, is here the foundation of the sense of familiarity? At the basis of recognition there would thus be a phenomenon of a motor order.
To recognize a common object is mainly to know how to use it. This is so true that early observers gave the name apraxia to that failure of recognition which we call psychic blindness.1 But to know how to use a thing is to sketch out the movements which adapt themselves to it; it is to take a certain attitude, or at least to have a tendency to do so through what the Germans call motor impulses (Bewegungsantriebe). The habit of using the object has, then, resulted in organizing together movements and perceptions; and the consciousness of these nascent movements, which follow perception after the manner of a reflex, must be here also at the bottom of recognition.
There is no perception which is not prolonged into movement. Ribot 2 and Maudsley 8 long since drew attention to this point. The training of 1 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, p. 181. Allen Starr, Apraxia and Aphasia (Medical Record, Oct. 27, 1888). — Cf. Laquer, Zur Localisation der Sensorischen Aphasie (Neurolog. Centralblati, June 15, 1888), and Dodds, On some central affections of vision (Brain, 1885).
2 Les mouvemcnts, et leur importance psychologique (Revue Philosophique,i8jg, vol. viii, p. 271 et seq.). — Cf. Psychologic de Vattention, Paris, 1889, p. 75.
a Physiology of Mind, p. 206 et seq.
the senses consists in just the sum of the connexions established between the sensory impression and the movement which makes use of it. As the impression is repeated, the connexion is consolidated. Nor is there anything mysterious in the mechanism of the operation. Our nervous system is evidently arranged with a view to the building up of motor apparatus linked, through the intermediary of cen tres, with sense stimuli; and the discontinuity of the nervous elements, the multiplicity of their terminal branches, which are probably capable of joining in various ways, make possible an unlimited number of connexions between impressions and the corresponding movements. But the mechan ism in course of construction cannot appear to consciousness in the same form as the mechan ism already constructed. There is something which profoundly distinguishes and clearly mani fests those systems of movements which are consoli dated in the organism; and that is, we believe, the difficulty we have in modifying their order. It is, again, the preformation of the movements which follow in the movements which precede, a preformation whereby the part virtually con tains the whole, as when each note of a tune learnt by heart seems to lean over the next to watch its execution.1 If, then, even* perception has 1 In one of the mo<t ingenious chapters of his Psychologic (Paris, 1893, vol. i, p. -42. Fouillee says that the sense of familiarity is largely due to the diminution of the inward sJtock which constitutes surprise.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 113 its organized motor accompaniment, the ordinary feeling of recognition has its root in the conscious ness of this organization.
In fact, we commonly act our recognition before we think it. Our daily life is spent among objects whose very presence invites us to play a part: in this the familiarity of their aspect consists. Motor tendencies would, then, be enough by themselves to give us the feeling of recognition. But we hasten to add that in most cases there is something else besides.
For, while motor apparatus are built up under the influence of perceptions that are analysed And these with increasing precision by the body, £SSetS our Past psychical life is there: it Se°morya-moilg survives— as we shall try to provemem£-toZ with all the detail of its events localges intervene. jze(j in time. Always inhibited by the practical and useful consciousness of the present moment, that is to say, by the sensorimotor equilibrium of a nervous system con necting perception with action, this memory merely awaits the occurrence of a rift between the actual impression and its corresponding movement to slip in its images. As a rule, when we desire to go back along the course of the past and discover the known, localized, personal memory-image which is related to the present, an effort is necessary, whereby we draw back from the act to which perception inclines us: the latter would urge us towards the future; we have to go backwards into the past. In this sense, 114 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, u movement rather tends to drive away the image. Yet, in one way, it contributes to its approach. For, though the whole series of our past images remains present within us, still the representation which is analogous to the present perception has to be chosen from among all possible repre sentations. Movements, accomplished or merely nascent, prepare this choice, or at the very least mark out the field in which we shall seek the image we need. By the very constitution of our nervous system, we are beings in whom present impressions find their way to appropriate move ments: if it so happens that former images can just as well be prolonged in these movements, they take advantage of the opportunity to slip into the actual perception and get themselves adopted by it. They then appear, in fact, to our conscious ness, though it seems as if they ought, by right, to remain concealed by the present state. So we may say that the movements which bring about mechanical recognition hinder in one way, and encourage in another, recognition by images. In principle, the present supplants the past. But, on the other hand, ]ust because the disappearance of former images is due to their inhibition by our present attitude, those whose shape might fit into this attitude encounter less resistance than the others; and if, then, any one of them is indeed able to overcome the obstacle, it is the image most similar to the present perception that will actually do so.
CHAP. H MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 115 If our analysis is correct, the diseases which affect recognition will be of two widely differing Therefore forms, and facts will show us two kinds one kind of psychic of psychic blindness. For we may preblindness may,,..,.,, be due to a sume that, m some cases, it is the memdistnrbance. 1-1 of motor ory -image which can no longer reappear, habits, not to J '.?
the loss of and that, in other cases, it is merely images. the bond between perception and the accompanying habitual movements which is broken, — perception provoking diffused move ments, as though it were wholly new. Do the facts confirm this hypothesis?
There can be no dispute as to the first point. The apparent abolition of visual memory in psychic blindness is so common a fact that it served, fora time, as a definition of that disorder. We shall have to consider how far, and in what sense, mem ories can really disappear. What interests us for the moment is that cases occur in which there is no recognition and yet visual memory is not altogether lost. Have we here then, as we maintain, merely a disturbance of motor habits, or at most an inter ruption of the chain which unite them to sense perceptions? As no observer has considered a question of this nature, we should be hard put to it for an answer if we had not noticed here and there in their descriptions certain facts which appear to us significant.
The first of these facts is the loss of the sense of direction. All those who have treated the subject of psychic blindness have been struck bythispecu- Il6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n liarity. Lissauer's patient had completely lost the faculty of finding his way about his own house.1 Fr. Miiller insists on the fact that, while blind men soon learn to find their way, the victim of psychic blindness fails, even after months of practice, to find his way about his own room.2 But is not this faculty of orientation the same thing as the faculty of coordinating the movements of the body with the visual impression, and of mechanically prolong ing perceptions in useful reactions?
There is a second, and even more characteristic fact, and that is the manner in which these patients draw. We can conceive two fashions of drawing. In th^ first we manage, by tentative efforts, to set down here and there on the paper a certain number of points, and we then connect them together, verifying continually the resemblance between the drawing and the object. This is what is known as ' point to point ' drawing. But our habitual method is quite different. We draw with a continuous line, after having looked at, or thought of, our model. How shall we explain such a faculty, except by our habit of discovering at once the organization of the outlines of common objects, that is to say, by a motor tendency to draft their diagram in one continuous line? But if it is 1 Op. cit., Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1889-90, p. 224. Cf. Wilbrand, op. cit., p. 140, and Bernhardt, Eigenthiimlichcr Fall von Hirnerkrankung (Berliner klinischc Wochenschrift, 1877, P- 58i> * Op. cit.. Arch. f. Psychiatric, vol. xxiv, p.
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 117 just such habits or correspondences which are lost in certain forms of psychic blindness, the patient may still perhaps be able to draw bits of a line which he will connect together more or less well; but he will no longer be able to draw at a stroke, because the tendency to adopt and reproduce the general movement of the outline is no longer pre sent in his hand. Now this is just what experi ment verifies. Lissauer's observations are instruc tive on this head.1 His patient had the greatest difficulty in drawing simple objects; and if he tried to draw them from memory, he traced de tached portions of them chosen at random, and was unable to unite these into a whole. Cases of complete psychic blindness are, however, rare. Those of word-blindness are much more numerous — cases of a loss, that is, of visual recognition limited to the characters of the alphabet. Now it is a fact of common observation that the patient, in such cases, is unable to seize what may be called the movement of the letters when he tries to copy them. He begins to draw them at any point, passing back and forth between the copy and the original to make sure that they agree. And this is the more remarkable in that he often retains unimpaired the faculty of writing from dictation or spon taneously. What is lost is clearly the habit of distinguishing the articulations of the object per ceived, that is to say, of completing the visual Il8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 perception by a motor tendency to sketch its diagram. Whence we may conclude that such is indeed the primordial condition of recogni tion.
But we must pass now from automatic recog nition, which is mainly achieved through move ments, to that which requires the regular interven tion of memory- images. The first is recognition by ^attention; the second, as we shall see, is attentive recognition.
This form also begins by movements. But, whereas, in automatic recognition, our movements prolong our perception in order to draw from it useful effects and thus take us away from the object perceived, here, on the contrary, they bring us back to the object, to dwell upon its outlines. Thus is explained the preponderant, and no longer merely accessory, part taken here by memoryimages. For if we suppose that the movements forego their practical end, and that motor activity, instead of continuing perception by useful reactions, turns back to mark out its more striking features, then the images which are analogous to the pre sent perception, — images of which these movements have already sketched out, so to speak, the form, — will come regularly, and no longer accidentally, to flow into this mould, though they may have to give up much of their detail in order to get in more easily.
///. — Gradual passage of recollections into movements. Recognition and attention. — Here we come Transition to to the essential point of our discussion. recognition. ^n those cases where recognition is biem oTattSi- attentive, i.e. where memory-images co0nsisdhe°tedd be are regularly united with the present perception, is it the perception which teoCtthe determines mechanically the appearance brain. of ^e memories, or is it the memories which spontaneously go to meet the perception?
On the answer to this question will depend the nature of the relation which philosophers will have to establish between the brain and memory. For in every perception there is a disturbance communi cated by the nerves to the perceptive centres. If the passing on of this movement to other cortical centres had, as its real effect, the upspringing of images in these, then we might in strictness main tain that memory is but a function of the brain. But if we can establish that here, as elsewhere, movement produces nothing but movement, that the office of the sense-stimulation is merely to impress on the body a certain attitude into which recollections will come to insert themselves, then, as it would be clear that the whole effect of the material vibrations is exhausted in this work of motor adaptation, we should have to look for memory elsewhere. On the first hypothesis, the disorders of memory occasioned by a cerebral lesion would result from the fact that the recol lections occupied the damaged region and were destroyed with it. On the second, these lesions 120 MATTER AND MEMORY CHA*. it would affect our nascent or possible action, but our action alone. Sometimes they would hinder the body from taking, in regard to the object, the attitude that may call back its memory-image; sometimes they would sever the bonds between remembrance and the present reality; that is, by suppressing the last phase of the realization of a memory — the phase of action — they would thereby hinder the memory from becoming actual. But in neither case would a lesion of the brain really destroy memories.
The second hypothesis is ours; but, before we attempt to verify it, we must briefly state how we understand the general relations of percep tion, attention and memory. In order to show how a memory may, by gradual stages, come to graft itself on an attitude or a movement, we shall have to anticipate in some degree the con clusions of our next chapter.
What is attention? In one point of view the essential effect of attention is to render perception more intense, and to spread out its flrilran11 **' details; regarded in its content, it would *hePbody°.n °! resolve itself into a certain magnifying Seively>it of the intellectual state.1 But, on the movement0* °^her hand, consciousness testifies to an irreducible difference of form between 1 Marillier, Remarqucs sur le mecanisme de I'altention (Revue Philosophique, 1889, vol. xxvii). — Cf. Ward, art. PSYCHOLOGY in the Encyclopaedia Briiannica; and Bradley, Is there a Special Activity of Attention? (Mind, 1886, vol. xi, P. 3050 CHA*. ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 121 this increase of intensity and that which is owing to a higher power of the external stimulus: it seems indeed to come from within, and to indicate a certain attitude adopted by the intellect. But just here begins the difficulty, for the idea of an intellectual attitude is not a clear idea. Psy chologists will here speak of a ' concentration of the mind/ 1 or again of an ' apperceptive ' a effort to bring perception into the field of distinct intelligence. Some of them, materializing this idea, will suppose a higher tension of cerebral energy,3 or even the setting free of a certain amount of central energy which reinforces the stimulation received.4 But either the fact observed psy chologically is merely translated thereby into a physiological symbolism which seems to us even less clear, or else we always come back to a metaphor. Stage by stage we shall be led on to define atten tion as an adaptation of the body rather than of the mind, and to see in this attitude of consciousness mainly the consciousness of an attitude. Such is the position assumed by Ribot6 in the discussion, and, though it has been attacked,* 1 Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. i, p. 247.
2 Wundt, Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologic, vol. iii, p. 331 et seq.
3 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, p. 299. Cf. Bastian, Les processus nerueux dans I 'attention (Revue Philosophique, vol. xxxiii, p. 360 et seq.).
4 W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 441. 6 Psychologie de I' attention, Paris, 1889.
• Marillier, op. cit. Cf. J. Sully, The Psycho- physical Process in Attention (Brain, 1890, p. 154).
it appears to have retained all its strength, pro vided, however, that we are content to see, in the movements described by Ribot, only the negative condition of the phenomenon. For, even if we suppose that the accompanying move ments of voluntary attention are mainly move ments of arrest, we still have to explain the accom panying work of the mind, that is to say, the But the mysterious operation by which the same positive ride..., of attention organ, perceiving in the same surroundis the effort.,,.,.., which seeks ings the same object, discovers in it past memory-.,..
images to a growing number of things. But we insert them,°,°.
into the may go farther, and maintain that the perception, phenomena of inhibition are merely a preparation for the actual movements of volun tary attention. Suppose for a moment that atten tion, as we have already suggested, implies a backward movement of the mind which thus gives up the pursuit of the useful effect of a present per ception: there will indeed be, first, an inhibition of movement, an arresting action. But, upon this general attitude, more subtle movements will soon graft themselves, some of which have been already remarked and described,1 and all of which combine to retrace the outlines of the object perceived. With these movements the positive, no longer merely negative, work of attention begins. It is continued by memories.
For, while external perception provokes on our 1 N. Lange, Beitr. zur Theorie der Sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit (Philos. Studien, Wundt, vol. vii, pp. 390-422).
part movements which retrace its main lines, our memory directs upon the perception received the memory-images which resemble it and which are already sketched out by the movements themselves. Memory thus creates anew the present perception; or rather it doubles this perception by reflecting upon it either its own image or some other memoryimage of the same kind. If the retained or remembered image will not cover all the details of the image that is being perceived, an appeal is made to the deeper and more distant regions of memory, until other details that are already known come to project themselves upon those details that remain unperceived. And the operation may go on in definitely; — memory strengthening and enriching perception, which, in its turn becoming wider, draws into itself a growing number of comple mentary recollections. So let us no longer think of a mind which disposes of some fixed quantity of light, now diffusing it around, now concen trating it on a single point. Metaphor for meta phor, we would rather compare the elementary work of attention to that of the telegraph clerk who, on receipt of an important despatch, sends it back again, word for word, in order to check its accuracy.
But, to send a telegram, we must know how to use the machine. And, in the same way, in order to reflect upon a perception the image which we have received from it, we must be able to reproduce it, i.e. to reconstruct it by an effort of synthesis.
124 MATTER AND MEMORV CHAP, n It has been said that attention is a power of analysis, and it is true; but it has not been suffi ciently shown how an analysis of this kind is possible, nor by what process we are able to discover in a perception that which could not be perceived in it at first. The truth is that this analysis is effected by a series of attempts at a synthesis, i.e. by so many hypotheses: our memory chooses, one after the other, various analogous images which it launches in the direction of the new perception. But the choice is not made at random. What suggests the hypotheses, what presides, even from afar, over the choice is the movement of imitation which continues the perception, and provides for the perception and for the images a common framework.
But, if this be so, the mechanism of distinct perception must be different from what it Thus an is usually thought to be. Perception attentive -, i • • perception is does not consist merely in impresonrthe sions gathered, or even elaborated, by of chosen the mind. This is the case, at most, the* past, with the perceptions that are dissipated as soon as received, those which we disperse in useful actions. But every attentive percep tion truly involves a reflexion, in the etymological sense of the word, that is to say the pro jection, outside ourselves, of an actively created image, identical with, or similar to, the object on which it comes to mould itself. If, after having gazed at any object, we turn our eyes abruptly CHAP. ii. RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 125 away, we obtain an ' after image ' of it: must we not suppose that this image existed already while we were looking? The recent discovery of centrifugal fibres of perception inclines us to think that this is the usual course of things and that, beside the afferent process which carries the impression to the centre, there is another process, of contrary direction, which brings back the image to the periphery. It is true that we are here dealing with images photographed upon the object itself, and with memories following immediately upon the perception of which they are but the echo. But, behind these images, which are identical with the object, there are others, stored in memory, which merely resemble it, and others, finally, which are only more or less distantly akin to it. All these go out to meet the perception, and, feeding on its substance, acquire sufficient vigour and life to abide with it in space. The experiments of Miinsterberg1 and of Kiilpe * leave no doubt as to this latter point: any memory-image that is capable of interpreting our actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no longer able to discern what is perception and what is memory. The ingenious experiments of Goldscheider and Miiller on the mechanism of reading are most interesting in this regard.3 Arguing against Grashey, who, in 1 Bcitrdge zur experimentetten Psychologic, vol. iv, p. 15 et seq. 2 Grundriss der Psychologic. Leipzig, 1893, p. 185.
8 Zur Physiologic und Pathologic dcs Lesens (Zcitschr. /.
126 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ix a well-known essay,1 maintained that we read words letter by letter, these observers proved by experiments that rapid reading is a real work of divination. Our mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all the inter vals with memory-images which, projected on the paper, take the place of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them. Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing. Our distinct perception is really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image, going towards the mind, and the memoryimage, launched into space, career the one behind the other.
We must emphasize this latter point. Atten tive perception is often represented as a series The of processes which make their way in number and • i /-,,-, i-...complexity single file; the object exciting sensations, the sensations causing ideas to on the1"" start up before them, each idea setting teDJicm0 in motion, one in front of the other, adopted by, r, •, the mind. points more and more remote of the intellectual mass. Thus there is supposed to be a rectilinear progress, by which the mind goes further and further from the object, never to return to it. We maintain, on the contrary.