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, 184 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in 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 half- formed 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 l88 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP- "' to the rest of the chain. — But, if we look at the matter nearly, we shall see that our memories form a chain of the same kind, and that our char acter, always present in all our decisions, is indeed the actual synthesis of all our past states. In this epitomized form our previous psychical life exists for us even more than the external world, of which we never perceive more than a very small part, whereas on the contrary we use the whole of our lived experience. It is true that we possess merely a digest of it, and that our former percep tions, considered as distinct individualities, seem to us to have completely disappeared, or to appear again only at the bidding of their caprice. But this semblance of complete destruction or of capricious revival is due merely to the fact that actual consciousness accepts at each moment the useful, and rejects in the same breath the super fluous. Ever bent upon action, it can only ma terialize those of our former perceptions which can ally themselves with the present perception to take a share in the final decision. If it is neces sary, when I would manifest my will at a given point of space, that my consciousness should go successively through those intermediaries or those obstacles of which the sum constitutes what we call distance in space, so on the other hand it is useful, in order to throw light on this action, that my con sciousness should jump the interval of time which separates the actual situation from a former one which resembles it; and as consciousness goes CHAP, iii EXISTENCE 189 back to the earlier date at a bound, all the inter mediate past escapes its hold. The same reasons, then, which bring about that our perceptions range themselves in strict continuity in space, cause our memories to be illumined discontinuously in time. We have not, in regard to objects unperceived in space and unconscious memories in time, to do with two radically different forms of existence; but the exigencies of action are the inverse in the one case of what they are in the other.
But here we come to the capital problem of existence, a problem we can only glance at, for Existence im- otherwise it would lead us step by step mt° *he neart of metaphysics. We will merely say that with regard to matters °^ experience — which alone concern us nere — existence appears to imply two either. conditions taken together: (i) presenta tion in consciousness; and (2) the logical or causal connexion of that which is so presented with what precedes and with what follows. The reality for us of a psychical state or of a material object consists in the double fact that our consciousness perceives them and that they form part of a series, temporal or spatial, of which the elements determine each other. But these two conditions admit of degrees, and it is conceiv able that, though both are necessary, they may be unequally fulfilled. Thus, in the case of actual internal states, the connexion is less close, and the determination of the present by the past, leav- IQO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ni ing ample room for contingency, has not the character of a mathematical derivation; — but then, presentation in consciousness is perfect, an actual psychical state yielding the whole of its content in the act itself whereby we perceive it. On the contrary, if we are dealing with external objects it is the connexion which is perfect, since these objects obey necessary laws; but then the other condition, presentation in con sciousness, is never more than partially fulfilled, for the material object, just because of the multi tude of unperceived elements by which it is linked with all other objects, appears to enfold within itself and to hide behind it infinitely more than it allows to be seen. — We ought to say, then, that existence, in the empirical sense of the word, always implies conscious apprehension and regular connexion; both at the same time but in different degrees. But our intellect, of which the function is to establish clear-cut distinctions, does not so understand things. Rather than admit the presence in all cases of the two elements mingled The fallacy in varving proportions, it prefers to dis- dissociate them, and thus attribute tingvushmg two kinds of to external objects on the one hand, and existence characterized to internal states on the other, two radithe one by conscious:ally different modes of existence, each apprehension, and the other characterized by the exclusive presence of by regular connexion. the condition which should be regarded as merely preponderating. Then the existence of psychical states is assumed to consist entirely in CHAP in. RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQI their apprehension by consciousness, and that of ex ternal phenomena, entirely also, in the strict order of their concomitance and their succession. Whence the impossibility of leaving to material objects, existing, but unperceived, the smallest share in consciousness, and to internal unconscious states the smallest share in existence. We have shown, at the beginning of this book, the consequences of the first illusion: it ends by falsifying our representation of matter. The second, comple mentary to the first, vitiates our conception of mind by casting over the idea of the unconscious an artificial obscurity. The whole of our past psychical life conditions our present state, with out being its necessary determinant; whole, also, it reveals itself in our character, although no one of its past states manifests itself explicitly in character. Taken together, these two con ditions assure to each one of the past psychological states a real, though an unconscious, existence.
But we are so much accustomed to reverse, for the sake of action, the real order of things, But, if mem- we are so strongly obsessed by images "s1*6" drawn from space, that we cannot hin- ^er ourselves from asking where mem- ories are stored up. We understand the Question, ^hat physico-chemical phenomena take place in the brain, that the brain is in the body, the body in the air which surrounds it, etc.; but the past, once achieved, if it is retained, where is it? To locate it in the cerebral suba IQ2 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in stance, in the state of molecular modification, seems clear and simple enough, because then we have a receptacle, actually given, which we have only to open in order to let the latent images flow into consciousness. But if the brain cannot serve such a purpose, in what warehouse shall we store the accumulated images? — We forget that the relation of container to content borrows its apparent clearness and universality from the necessity laid upon us of always opening out space in front of us, and of always closing duration be hind us. Because it has been shown that one thing is within another, the phenomenon of its preserva tion is not thereby made any clearer. We may even go further: let us admit for a moment that the past survives in the form of a memory stored in the brain; it is then necessary that the brain, in order to preserve the memory, should pre serve itself. But the brain, in so far as it is an image extended in space, never occupies more than the present moment: it constitutes, with all the rest of the material universe, an ever renewed section of universal becoming. Either, then, you must suppose that this universe dies and is born again miraculously at each moment of dura tion, or you must attribute to it that continuity of existence which you deny to consciousness, and make of its past a reality which endures and is. pro longed into its present. So that you have gained nothing by depositing the memories in matter, and you find yourself, on the contrary, compelled CHAP, in RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT 193 to extend to the totality of the states of the ma terial world that complete and independent sur vival of the past which you have just refused to psychical states. This survival of the past per se forces itself upon philosophers, then, under one form or another; and the difficulty that we have in conceiving it comes simply from the fact that we extend to the series of memories, in time, that obligation of containing and being contained which appHes only to the collection of bodies instantaneously perceived in space. The funda mental illusion consists in transferring to dura tion itself, in its continuous flow, the form of the instantaneous sections which we make in it.
But how can the past, which, by hypothesis, has ceased to be, preserve itself? Have we not here a real contradiction? — We reply Dot ceased to that the question is just whether the exist; it has., only ceased past has ceased to exist or whether it has simply ceased to be useful. You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present as going to be, it exists not yet; and when we think it as existing, it is already past. If, on the other hand, what you are considering is the concrete present such as it is act ually lived by consciousness, we may say that this present consists, in large measure, in the immediate o 194 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, ni past. In the fraction of a second which covers the briefest possible perception of light, billions of vibrations have taken place, of which the first is separated from the last by an interval which is enormously divided. Your perception, however instantaneous, consists then in an incalculable multitude of remembered elements; and in truth every perception is already memory. Practically we perceive only the past, the pure present being the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future.
Consciousness, then, illumines, at each moment of tune, that immediate part of the past which, impending over the future, seeks to realize and to associate with it. Solely preoccupied in thus determining an undetermined future, con sciousness may shed a little of its light on those of our states, more remote in the past, which can be usefully combined with our present state, that is to say, with our immediate past: the rest remains in the dark. It is in this illuminated part of our history that we remain seated, in virtue of the fundamental law of life, which is a law of action: hence the difficulty we experience in con ceiving memories which are preserved in the shadow. Our reluctance to admit the integral survival of the past has its origin, then, in the very bent of our psychical life, — an unfolding of states wherein our interest prompts us to look at that which is unrolling, and not at that which is entirely unrolled.
CHAP, in RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQ5 So we return, after a long digression, to our point of departure. There are, we have said, two The two memories which are profoundly distinct: the one> fixed in the organism, is nothing else but the complete set of •uppoXdthe intelligently constructed mechanisms other> which ensure the appropriate reply to the various possible demands. This memory enables us to adapt ourselves to the present situa tion; through it the actions to which we are sub ject prolong themselves into reactions that are sometimes accomplished, sometimes merely nas cent, but always more or less appropriate. Habit rather than memory, it acts our past experience but does not call up its image. The other is the true memory. Co-extensive with consciousness, it retains and ranges alongside of each other all our states in the order in which they occur, leaving to each fact its place and consequently marking its date, truly moving in the past and not, like the first, in an ever renewed present. But, in marking the profound distinction between these two forms of memory, we have not shown their connecting link. Above the body, with its mechanisms which symbolize the accumulated effort of past actions, the memory which ima gines and repeats has been left to hang, as it were, suspended in the void. Now, if it be true that we never perceive anything but our immediate past, if our consciousness of the present is already memory, the two terms 196 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in which had been separated to begin with cohere closely together. Seen from this new point of view, indeed, our body is nothing but that part of our representation which is ever being born again, the part always present, or rather that which at each moment is just past. Itself an image, the body cannot store up images, since it forms a part of the images; and this is why it is a chimerical enterprise to seek to localize past or even present perceptions in the brain: they are not in it; it is the brain that is in them. But this special image which persists in the midst of the others, and which I call my body, constitutes at every moment, as we have said, a section of the universal becoming. It is then the place of passage of the movements received and thrown back, a hyphen, a connecting link between the things which act upon me and the things upon which I act, — the seat, in a word, of the sensori- motor phenomena. If I represent by a cone SAB the totality of the recollections accumulated in my memory, the base AB, situated in the past, remains motionless, while the summit S, which indicates at all times my present, moves forward unceasingly, and unceasingly also touches the moving plane P of my actual representation of the universe. At S the image of the body is concentrated; and, since it belongs to the plane P, this image does but receive and restore actions emanating from all the images of which the plane is composed.
CHAP, ni RELATION OF PAST AND PRESENT IQ7 The bodily memory, made up of the sum of the sensori-motor systems organized by habit, is then a quasi-instantaneous mem ory to which the true memory of the past serves as base. Since they are not two separ ate things, since the first is only, as we have said, the pointed end, ever moving, inserted by the second in the shifting plane of experience,it is natural that the two functions should lend each other a mutual support. So, on the one hand, the memory of the past offers to the sensori-motor mechanisms all the recollections capable of guiding them in their task and of giv ing to the motor reaction the direction suggested by the lessons of experience. It is in just this that the associations of contiguity and likeness consist. But, on the other hand, the sensori-motor apparatus furnish to ineffective, that is uncon scious, memories, the means of taking on a body, of materializing themselves, in short of becoming present. For, that a recollection should reappear in consciousness, it is necessary that it should descend from the heights of pure memory down to the precise point where action is taking place. In other words, it is from the present that comes the appeal to which memory responds, and it is from the sensori-motor elements of present action that a memory borrows the warmth which gives it life.