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is not perception itself. Consider memory, the body retains motor habits capable of acting the past over
again; it can resume attitudes in which the past will insert itself ; or, again, by the repetition of certain
cerebral phenomena which have prolonged former perceptions, it can furnish to remembrance a point of
attachment with the actual, a means of recovering its lost influence upon present reality : but in no case can
the brain
(300) store up recollections or images. Thus, neither in perception, nor in memory, nor a f fortiori in the
higher attainments of mind, does the body contribute directly to representation. By developing this
hypothesis under its manifold aspects and thus pushing dualism to an extreme, we appeared to divide body
and soul by an impassable abyss. In truth, we were indicating the only possible means of bringing them
together.
Perception and
II. All the difficulties raised by this problem, either in ordinary dualism, or in materialism and idealism,
come from considering, in the phenomena of and memory the physical and the mental as duplicates the one memory. the physical
and the mental, are not
of the other. Suppose I place myself at the materialist point of view of the epiphenomenal consciousness: I
mere duplicates of each
am quite unable to understand why certain cerebral phenomena are accompanied by consciousness, that is
other
to say, of what use could be, or how could ever arise, the conscious repetition of the material universe I
have begun by positing. Suppose I prefer idealism: I then allow myself only perceptions, and my body is
one of them. But whereas observation shows me that the images I perceive are entirely changed by very
slight alterations of the image I call my body (since I have only to shut my eyes and my visual universe
disappears), science assures me that all phenomena must succeed and condition one another according to a
determined order, in which
(301) effects are strictly proportioned to causes. I am obliged, therefore, to seek, in the image which I call
my body, and which follows me everywhere, for changes which shall be the equivalents-but the well-
regulated equivalents, now deducible from each other-of the images which succeed one another around my
body : the cerebral movements, to which I am led back in this way, again are the duplicates of my
perceptions. It is true that these movements are still perceptions, 'possible' perceptions,-so that this second
hypothesis is more intelligible than the first ; but, on the other hand, it must suppose, in its turn, an
inexplicable correspondence between my real perception of things and my possible perception of certain
cerebral movements which do not in any way resemble these things. When we look at it closely, we shall
see that this is the reef upon which all idealism is wrecked there is no possible transition from the order
which is perceived by our senses to the order which we are to conceive for the sake of our science, -or, if
we are dealing more particularly with the Kantian idealism, no possible transition from sense to
understanding.-So my only refuge seems to be ordinary dualism. I place matter on this side, mind on that,
and I suppose that cerebral movements are the cause or the occasion of my representation of objects. But if
they are its cause, if they are enough to produce it, I must fall back, step by step, upon the material-
(302) -istic hypothesis of an epiphenomenal consciousness. If they are only its occasion, I thereby suppose
that they do not resemble it in any way, and so, depriving matter of all the qualities which I conferred upon
it in my representation, I come back to idealism. Idealism and materialism are then the two poles between
which this kind of dualism will always oscillate; and when, in order to maintain the duality of substances, it
decides to make them both of equal rank, it will be led to regard them as two translations of one and the
same original, two parallel and predetermined developments of a single principle, and thus to deny their
reciprocal influence, and, by an inevitable consequence, to sacrifice freedom.
Now, if we look beneath these three hypotheses, we find that they have a common basis all three regard the The mistake is due to
our believing that
elementary operations of the mind, perception and memory, as operations of pure knowledge. What they
place at the origin of consciousness is either the useless duplicate of an external reality or the inert material perception and
memory are pure
of an intellectual construction entirely disinterested: but they always neglect the relation of perception with knowledge, whereas
action and of memory with conduct. Now, it is no doubt possible to conceive, as an ideal limit, a memory
they point to action
and a perception that are disinterested ; but, in fact, it is towards action that memory and perception are
turned; it is action that the body pre-
(303) -pares. Do we consider perception ? The growing complexity of the nervous system shunts the
excitation received on to an ever larger variety of motor mechanisms, and so sketches out simultaneously
an ever larger number of possible actions. Do we turn to memory ? We note that its primary function is to
evoke all those past perceptions which are analogous to the present perception, to recall to us what
preceded and followed them, and so to suggest to us that decision which is the most useful. But this is not
all. By allowing us to grasp in a single intuition multiple moments of duration, it frees us from the
movement of the flow of things, that is to say, from the rhythm of necessity. The more of these moments
memory can contract into one, the firmer is the hold which it gives to us on matter : so that the memory of
a living being appears indeed to measure, above all, its powers of action upon things, and to be only the
intellectual reverberation of this power. Let us start, then, from this energy, as from the true principle : let
us suppose that the body is a centre of action, and only a centre of action. We must see what consequences
thence result for perception, for memory, and for the relations between body and mind.
III. To take perception first. Here is my body with its ` perceptive centres.' These centres vibrate, and I have Perception gives us
"things-in-
the representation of things. On the other hand I have supposed that these vibrations can
themselves."
(304) neither produce nor translate my perception. It is, then, outside them. Where is it ? I cannot hesitate
as to the answer: positing my body, I posit a certain image, but with it also the aggregate of the other
images, since there is no material image which does not owe its qualities, its determinations, in short its
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