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 memory- images. 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 move- CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS ments. 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).
122 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 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 Aufmerk- samkeit (Philos. Studien, Wundt, vol. vii, pp. 390-422).
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 123 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 memory- image 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 impres- onrthe 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 memory- image, 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.
Klinische Medicin, 1893). — Cf. McKeen Cattell, Ueber dig Zeit der Erkennung von Schriftzeichen (Philos. Studien, 1885- 86).
1 Ueber Aphasie and ihre Beziehungen zur W ahrnehmungen (Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1885, vol. xvi).
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 127 that reflective perception is a circuit, in which all the elements, including the perceived object itself, hold each other in a state of mutual tension as in an electric circuit, so that no disturbance starting from the object can stop on its way and remain in the depths of the mind: it must always find its way back to the object whence it proceeds. Now, it must not be thought that this is a mere matter of words. We have here two radically different conceptions of the intellectual process. According to the first, things happen mechanic ally, and by a merely accidental series of succes sive additions. At each moment of an attentive perception, for example, new elements sent up from a deeper stratum of the mind might join the earlier elements, without creating thereby a general disturbance and without bringing about a transformation of the whole system. In the second, on the contrary, an act of attention implies such a solidarity between the mind and its object, it is a circuit so well closed, that we cannot pass to states of higher concentration without creating, whole and entire, so many new circuits which envelop the first and have nothing in common between them but the perceived object. Of these different circles of memory, which later we shall study in detail, the smallest, A, is the nearest to immediate perception. It contains only the object O, with the after-image which comes back and overlies it. Behind it, the larger and larger circles B, C, D correspond to growing 128 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. II efforts at intellectual expansion. It is the whole of memory, as we shall see, that passes over into each of these circuits, since memory is always present; but that memory, capable, by reason of its elasticity, of expanding more and more, i reflects upon the object a growing number of sug gested images, — sometimes the details of the object itself, sometimes concomi tant details which may throw light upon it. Thus, after having rebuilt the object perceived, as an independent whole, we re assemble, together with it, the more and more distant conditions with which it forms one system. If we call B', C', D', these causes of growing depth, situated behind the object, and virtually given with the object itself, it will be seen that the progress of attention results in creating anew not only the object perceived, but also the ever widening systems with which it may be bound up; so that in the measure in which the circles B, C, D represent a higher expansion of memory, their reflexion attains in B', Of, D' deeper strata of reality.
The same psychical life, therefore, must be no. L CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS I2Q supposed to be repeated an endless number of times on the different storeys of memory, and the same act of the mind may be performed at varying heights. In the effort of attention, the mind is always concerned in its entirety, but it simplifies or complicates itself according to the level on which it chooses to go to work. Usually it is the present perception which determines the direction of our mind; but, according to the degree of tension which our mind adopts and the height at which it takes its stand, the perception develops a greater or smaller number of images. In other words, personal recollections, exactly localized, the series of which represents the course so there ate °f our Past existence, make up, all to- pi£esenoi gether, the last and largest enclosure themSeat °f our memory. Essentially fugitive, SS,811 they become materialized only by chance, plane8 of* either when an accidentally precise de- dream, termination of our bodily attitude attracts them, or when the very indetermination of that attitude leaves a clear field to the caprices of their manifestation. But this outer most envelope contracts and repeats itself in inner and concentric circles, which in the:r narrower range enclose the same recollections grown smaller, more and more removed from their personal and original form, and more and more capable, from their lack of distinguishing features, of being applied to the present percep tion and of determining it after the manner of a I3O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 species which defines and absorbs the individual. There comes a moment when the recollection thus brought down is capable of blending so well with the present perception that we cannot say where perception ends or where memory begins. At that precise moment, memory, instead of capri ciously sending in and calling back its images, follows regularly, in all their details, the move ments of the body.
But, in the degree that these recollections draw nearer to movements, and so to external per- wwie, on ception, the work of memory acquires action"16 °f a mgner practical importance. Past images, reproduced exactly as they were, bec^Le°one w^n a^ their details and even with their with action, affective colouring, are the images of idle fancy or of dream: to act is just to induce this memory to shrink, or rather to become thinned and sharpened, so that it presents nothing thicker than the edge of a blade to actual exper ience, into which it will thus be able to penetrate. In truth, it is because psychology has failed to separate out the motor element in memory, that we have sometimes overlooked and sometimes exaggerated what is automatic in the evocation of remembrances. According to our view, an appeal is made to activity at the precise moment when perception gives rise to imitative move ments which scan it, as it were, automatically. A sketch is thereby furnished to us, into which we put the right details and the right colouring by CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 131 projecting into it memories more or less remote. But such is not the usual way of describing the process. Sometimes the mind is supposed to be absolutely independent of circumstances, to work exactly as it likes on present or absent objects; — and then we can no longer understand how it is that the normal process of attention may be seriously impaired by even a slight disturbance of the sensori-motor equilibrium. Sometimes, on the contrary, the „ evocation of images is sup posed to be a mere mechanical effect of present perception; it is assumed that, by a necessary concatenation of processes supposed to be all alike, the object calls forth sensations and the sensations ideas which cling to them; — but then, since there is no reason why the operation, which is mechanical to begin with, should change its character as it goes on, we are led to the hypo thesis of a brain wherein mental states may dwell to slumber and to awaken. In both cases the true function of the body is misunderstood, and as neither theory teaches how and why the inter vention of a mechanism is necessary, neither of them is able to show where such intervention should stop if it is once brought in.
But it is time to leave these general considera tions. We must ascertain whether our hypothesis is confirmed or contradicted by the facts of cerebral localization known at the present day. The disorders of imaginative memory, which correspond to local lesions of the cortex, are 132 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n always diseases of the faculty of recognition; either of visual or auditory recognition in general (psychic blindness and deafness), or of the recog nition of words (word blindness, word deafness, etc.). These disorders we have now to exam ine.
If our hypothesis is well founded, these failures of recognition are in no sense due to the fact that the recollections occupied the in- Hence we may __ r infer that jured region of the brain. They must lesions oi the J * brain affect be due to one of two causes: somethe automatic movements of times our body is no longer able inattentive J ° recognition, automatically to adopt, under the influor the volun- rt tary move- ence of the external stimulus, the precise ments of attentive attitude by means of which a choice recognition, but nothing could be automatically made among our memories; sometimes the mem ories are no longer able to find a fulcrum in the body, a means of prolonging themselves in action. In the first case, the lesion affects the mechanisms which continue, in an automati cally executed movement, the stimulation re ceived: attention can no longer be fixed by the object. In the second case, the lesion involves those particular cortical centres which prepare voluntary movements by lending them the re quired sensory antecedent, centres which, rightly or wrongly, are termed image-centres: attention can no longer be fixed by the subject. But, in either case, it is actual movements which are hindered or future movements which are no CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 133 longer prepared: there has been no destruction of memories.
Now pathology confirms this forecast. It re- reveals to us two absolutely distinct kinds of psychic blindness and deafness, and of word blindness and deafness. In the first kind, visual and auditory memories are still evoked, but they cannot apply themselves to the corresponding perceptions. In the second, evocation of the memories themselves is hindered. Is it true that the lesion involves, as we said, the sensori-motor mechanisms of auto matic attention in the first case, and the imagina tive mechanisms of voluntary attention in the second? In order to verify our hypothesis, we must limit demonstration to a definite example. No doubt we could show that visual recognition of things in general, and of words in particular, implies a semi-automatic motor process to begin with, and then an active projection of memories which engraft themselves on the corresponding atti tudes. But we prefer to confine ourselves to impres sions of hearing, and more particularly to the hear ing of articulate language, because this example is the most comprehensive. To hear speech is, in fact, first of all to recognize a sound, then to discover its sense, and finally to interpret it more or less thoroughly: in short, it is to pass through all the stages of attention and to exercise several higher or lower powers of memory. More over, no disorders are more common or better studied than those of the auditive memory of 134 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n words. And, lastly, acoustic verbal images are not destroyed without a serious lesion of certain determined convolutions of the cortex: so that we are here provided with an undisputed example of localization, in regard to which we can enquire whether the brain is really capable of storing up memories. We have, then, to show in the audi tory recognition of words: first, an automatic sensori-motor process; secondly, an active and, so to speak, excentric projection of memory- images.
i. I listen to two people speaking in a language which is unknown to me. Do I therefore hear Evidence from them talk? The vibrations which whaytdwe We' reacn my ears are the same as those String and which strike theirs. Yet I perceive ^mSor' The only a confused noise, in which all diagram.' sounds are alike. I distinguish no thing, and could not repeat anything. In this same sonorous mass, however, the two interlo cutors distinguish consonants, vowels and sylla bles which are not at all alike, in short, separate words. Between them and me where is the difference?
The question is, how can the knowledge of a language, which is only memory, modify the material content of a present perception, and cause some listeners actually to hear what others, in the same physical conditions, do not hear. It is alleged, indeed, that the auditory CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 135 recollections of words, accumulated in memory, are called up by the sound-impression and come to strengthen its effect. But if the conversa tion to which I listen is, for me, only a noise, we may suppose the sound increased as much as we like: the noise will be none the more intelligible for being louder. I grant that the memory of a word will be called up by the sound of that word: yet it is necessary, for this, that the sound of the word should have been heard by the ear. How can the sounds perceived speak to memory, how can they choose, in the store house of auditory images, those which should come to rejoin them, unless they have been al ready separated, distinguished, — in short, per ceived, — as syllables and as words?
This difficulty does not appear to have been sufficiently noticed by the theorists of sensory aphasia. For in word deafness the patient finds himself, in regard to his own language, in the same position as we all are when we hear an unknown tongue. He has generally preserved intact his sense of hearing, but he has no under standing of the words spoken to him, and is fre quently even unable to distinguish them. The explanation generally given of the disease is that the auditory recollection of words has been destroyed in the cortex, or that a lesion, sometimes transcortical, sometimes sub-cortical, hinders the auditive memory from evoking the idea, or the perception from uniting with the 136 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n memory. But in the latter case, at least, the psychological question has still to be answered: what is the conscious process which the lesion has abolished, and what is the intermediary pro cess that we go through in our normal condition in order to discern words and syllables which are, at first, given to the ear as a continuity of sound?