it recalls to us first an image A' which is like it, because it is the recollection A', and not the perception A, which really touches B in memory. However distant, then, we suppose the terms A and B from each other, a relation of contiguity can always be found between them, provided that the intercalated term A' bears a sufficiently far fetched resemblance to A. This is as much as to say that between any two ideas chosen at random there is always a resemblance, and always, even, contiguity; so that, when we discover a relation of contiguity or of resemblance between two suc cessive ideas, we have in no way explained why the one evokes the other.
What we really need to discover is how a choice is effected among an infinite number of recollec tions which all resemble in some way the present perception, and why only one of them, — this rather than that, — emerges into the light of consciousness. But this is just what associationism cannot tell us, because it has made ideas and images into independent entities floating, like the atoms of Epicurus, in an inward space, drawing near to each other and catching hold of each other when chance brings them within the sphere of mutual attraction. And if we try to get to the bottom of the doctrine on this point, we find that its error is that it intellectualizes ideas over much: it attributes to them a purely speculative role, believes that they exist for themselves and not for us, and overlooks the relation which they 214 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m bear to the activity of the will. If memories move about, indifferent, in a consciousness that is both lifeless and shapeless, there is no reason why the present perception should prefer and attract any one of them: we can only, in that case, note the conjunction when once it has taken place and speak of similarity or of contiguity, — which is merely, at bottom, to express in vague terms that our mental states have affinities for one another.
But even of this affinity, which takes the double form of contiguity and of similarity, associationism can furnish no explanation. The general ten dency to associate remains as obscure for us, if we adhere to this doctrine, as the particular forms of association. Having stiffened individual memory- images into ready-made things, given cut and dry in the course of our mental life, associa tionism is reduced to bringing in, between these objects, mysterious attractions of which it is not even possible to say beforehand, as of physical attraction, by what effects they will manifest themselves. For why should an image which is, by hypothesis, self-sufficient, seek to accrue to itself others either similar or given in contiguity with it? The truth is that this independent image is a late and artificial product of the mind- In fact, we perceive the resemblance before we per ceive the individuals which resemble each other; and, in an aggregate of contiguous parts, we per ceive the whole before the parts. We go on from CHAP, m THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 215 similarity to similar objects, embroidering upon the similarity, as on their common stuff or canvas, the variety of individual differences. And we go on also from the whole to the parts, by a process of decomposition the law of which will appear later, a process which consists in breaking up, for the greater convenience of practical life, the continuity of the real. Association, then, is not the primary fact: dissociation is what we begin with, and the tendency of every mem ory to gather to itself others must be explained by the natural return of the mind to the undivided unity of perception.
But here we discover the radical vice of associa- tionism. Given a present perception which forms •similarity' kv turns, with different recollections, severa-l associations one after another, - there are two ways, as we said, of con- thsesmseeiv"e ceiymg the mechanism of this associa- accounted for. tion. We may suppose that the percep tion remains identical with itself, a true psychical atom which gathers to itself others just as these happen to be passing by. This is the point of view of associationism. But there is also another, — precisely the one which we have indicated in our theory of recognition. We have supposed that our entire personality, with the totality of our recollections, is present, undivided within our actual perception. Then, if this perception evokes in turn different memories, it is not by a mechan ical adjunction of more and more numerous 2l6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m elements which, while it remains itself unmoved, it attracts around it, but rather by an expansion of the entire consciousness which, spreading out over a larger area, discovers the fuller detail of its wealth. So a nebulous mass, seen through more and more powerful telescopes, resolves itself into an ever greater number of stars. On the first hypothesis (in favour of which there is little but its apparent simplicity and its analogy with a misunderstood physical atomism), each recollection is a fixed and independent being, of which we can neither say why it seeks to accrue to itself others, nor how it chooses, among a thousand memories which should have equal rights, those with which to associate itself in virtue of similarity or contiguity. We must suppose that ideas jostle each other at random, or that they exert among themselves mysterious forces, and moreover we have against us the witness of consciousness, which never shows us psychical facts floating as independent entities. From the second point of view, we merely state a fact, viz. that psychic facts are bound up with each other, and are always given together to immediate consciousness as an undivided whole which reflexion alone cuts up into distinct frag ments. What we have to explain, then, is no longer the cohesion of internal states, but the double movement of contraction and expansion by which consciousness narrows or enlarges the development of its content. But this move- CHAP, in THE PLANES OF DREAM AND ACTION 217 ment, we shall see, is the result of the fun damental needs of life; and we shall also see why the ' associations/ which we appear to form in the course of this movement, corre spond to all the possible degrees of so-called con tiguity and resemblance.
Let us, for a moment, suppose our psychical life reduced to sensori-motor functions alone. They should ^n other words, suppose ourselves placed first,°<mt£rdf m the diagrammatic figure on page 211 ?c?on.0wher« at the Pomt S, which corresponds to the they coincide; greatest possible simplification of our mental life. In this state every perception spontaneously prolongs itself into appropriate reactions; for analogous former perceptions have set up more or less complex motor apparatus, which only await a recurrence of the same appeal in order to enter into play. Now there is, in this mechanism, an associa tion of similarity, since the present perception acts in virtue of its likeness to past perceptions; and there is also an association of contiguity, since the movements which followed those former perceptions reproduce themselves, and may even bring in their train a vast num ber of actions co-ordinate with the first. Here then we seize association of similarity and association of contiguity at their Very source, and at a point where they are almost confounded in one — not indeed thought, but acted and lived. They are not contingent forms of our psychical 2l8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. HI life; they represent the two complementary aspects of one and the same fundamental tendency, the tendency of every organism to extract from a given situation that in it which is useful, and to store up the eventual reaction in the form of a motor habit, that it may serve other situations of the same kind.
Let us jump now to the other extremity of our mental life, and, following our line of thought, go from the psychical existence which o?tt?3!S?f is merety ' acted,' to that which is ex- clusively ' dreamed.' In other words, ^ us place ourselves on the base AB of memory (page 211) where all the events of our past life are set out in their small est details. A consciousness which, detached from action, should thus keep in view the totality of its past, would have no reason to dwell upon one part of this past rather than upon another. In one sense, all its recollections would differ from its present perception, for, if we take them with the multiplicity of their detail, no two memories are ever precisely the same thing. But, in another sense, any memory may be set alongside the pre sent situation: it would be sufficient to neglect in this perception and in this memory just enough detail for similarity alone to appear. Moreover, the moment that the recollection is linked with the perception, a multitude of events contig uous to the memory are thereby fastened to the perception — an indefinite multitude, which is only CHAP, in THE PLANES OF DREAM AND ACTION 2IQ limited at the point at which we choose to stop it. The necessities of life are no longer there to regulate the effect of similarity, and conse quently of contiguity; and as, after all, everything resembles everything else, it follows that any thing can be associated with anything. In the first case the present perception continued itself in determinate movements; now it melts into an infinity of memories, all equally possible. At AB association would provoke an arbitrary choice, and in S an inevitable deed.
But these are only two extreme limits, at which the psychologist must place himself alter nately for convenience of study, and Now normal...,. -.,.
psychical which are really never reached in praclife oscillates. _,. %..
between these tice. There is not, in man at least, a two extremes,.
according to purely senson-motor state, any more the degree of Jt,...
tension in than there is in mm an imaginative life without some slight activity be neath it. Our psychical life, as we have said, oscillates normally between these two extremes. On the one hand, the sensori-motor state S marks out the present direction of memory, being no thing else, in fact, than its actual and acting extremity; and on the other hand this memory itself, with the totality of our past, is continually pressing forward, so as to insert the largest possible part of itself into the present action. From this double effort result, at every mo ment, an infinite number of possible states of memory, states figured by the sections 22O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m A'B', A'B" of our diagram. These are, as we have said, so many repetitions of the whole of our past life. But each section is larger or smaller according to its nearness to the base or to the summit; and moreover each of these complete representations of the past brings to the light of consciousness only that which can fit into the sensori-motor state, and consequently that which resembles the present perception from the point of view of the action to be accom plished. In other words, memory, laden with the whole of the past, responds to the appeal of the present state by two simultaneous move ments, one of translation, by which it moves in its entirety to meet experience, thus contracting more or less, though without dividing, with a view to action; the other of rotation upon itself, by which it turns towards the situation of the moment, presenting to it that side of itself which may prove to be the most useful. To these varying degrees of contraction correspond the various forms of association by similarity.
Everything happens, then, as though our recollections were repeated an infinite number Associations of times in these many possible reducof similarity.,..._,, are more tions of our past life. They take a memory is more common form when memory near the plane,.,, •. •, of action, more shrinks most, more personal when it ft6 withdraws widens out, and they thus enter into plane of dream, an unlimited number of different ' sys- tematizations.' A word from a foreign language, CHAP, in DIFFERENT PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 221 uttered in my hearing, may make me think of that language in general or of a voice which once pronounced it in a certain way. These two associations by similarity are not due to the accidental arrival of two different representations, which chance brought by turns within the attract ing influence of the actual perception. They answer to two different mental dispositions, to two distinct degrees of tension of the memory; in the latter case nearer to the pure image, in the former more disposed towards immediate response, that is to say, to action. To classify these systems, to discover the law which binds them respectively to the different ' tones ' of our mental life, to show how each of these tones is itself determined by the needs of the moment and also by the varying degree of our personal effort, would be a difficult task: the whole of this psychology is yet to do, and for the moment we do not even wish to attempt it. But every one is clearly aware of the existence of these laws, and of stable relations of this kind. We know, for instance, when we read a psychological novel, that certain associations of ideas there depicted for us are true, that they may have been lived; others offend us, or fail to give us an impression of reality, because we feel in them the effect of a connexion, mechanically and artificially brought about, between different mental levels, as though the author had not taken care to maintain him self on that plane of the mental life which he 222 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in had chosen. Memory has then its successive and distinct degrees of tension or of vitality: they are certainly not easy to define, but the painter of mental scenery may not with impunity confound them. Pathology, moreover, here con firms — by means, it is true, of coarser examples —a truth of which we are all instinctively aware. In the ' systematized amnesias ' of hyster ical patients, for example, the recollections which appear to be abolished are really present; but they are probably all bound up with a certain determined tone of intellectual vitality in which the subject can no longer place himself.
Just as there are these different planes, infinite in number, for association by similarity, so there are with association by contiguity. In °J *J ™at°us t^ie extreme plane, which represents diat?betweeen ^e ^ase °^ memory, there is no recol- the two «- lection which is not linked by contiguity tremes, the J o J same memo- with the totality of the events which prenes are sys- J tematizedin ce(Je an(J ^Q ^th those which follow diverse ways.
it. Whereas, at the point in space where our action is concentrated, contiguity brings back, in the form of movement, only the reaction which immediately followed a former similar perception. As a matter of fact, every association by conti guity implies a position of the mind intermediate between the two extreme limits. If, here again, we imagine a number of possible repetitions of the total ity of our memories, each of these copies of our past life must be supposed to be cut up, in its own CHAP, in DIFFERENT PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 223 way, into definite parts, and the cutting up is not the same when we pass from one copy to another, each of them being in fact character ized by the particular kind of dominant mem ories on which the other memories lean as on supporting points. The nearer we come to action, for instance, the more contiguity tends to approximate to similarity and to be thus dis tinguished from a mere relation of chronological succession: thus we cannot say of the words of a foreign language, when they call each other up in memory, whether they are associated by similarity or by contiguity. On the contrary, the more we detach ourselves from action, real or possible, the more association by contiguity tends merely to reproduce the consecutive images of our past life. It is impossible to enter here into a profound study of these different systems. It is sufficient to point out that these systems are not formed of recollections laid side by side like so many atoms. There are always some dominant memories, shining points round which the others form a vague nebulosity. These shining points are multiplied in the degree in which our memory expands. The process of local izing a recollection in the past, for instance, can not at all consist, as has been said, in plunging into the mass of our memories as into a bag, to draw out memories, closer and closer to each other, between which the memory to be localized may find its place. By what happy chance 224 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, m could we just hit upon on a growing number of intercalary recollections? The work of localiza tion consists, in reality, in a growing effort of ex pansion, by which the memory, always present in its entirety to itself, spreads out its recollections over an ever wider surface and so ends by dis tinguishing, in what was till then a confused mass, the remembrance which could not find its proper place. Here again, moreover, the pathology of memory is instructive. In retrogressive amnesia, the recollections which disappear from conscious ness are probably preserved in remote planes of memory, and the patient can find them there by an exceptional effort like that which is effected in the hypnotic state. But on the lower planes these memories await, so to speak, the dominant image to which they may be fastened. A sharp shock, a violent emotion, forms the decisive event to which they cling; and if this event, by reason of its sudden character, is cut off from the rest of our history, they follow it into oblivion. We can understand, then, that the oblivion which follows a physical or moral shock should include the events which immediately preceded it — a phenomenon which is very difficult to explain in all other conceptions of memory.
Let us remark in passing that if we refuse to attribute some such waiting to recent, and even to relatively distant, recollections, the normal work of memory becomes unintelligible. For every event of which the recollection is now imprinted CHAP. HI ATTENTION TO LIFE 225 on the memory, however simple we suppose it to be, has occupied a certain time. The percep tions which filled the first period of this interval, and now form with the later perceptions an undivided memory, were then really ' loose ' as long as the decisive part of the event had not occurred and drawn them along. Between the disappearance of a memory with its various pre liminary details, and the abolition, in retrogres sive amnesia, of a greater or less number of recol lections previous to a given event, there is, then, merely a difference of degree and not of kind.
From these various considerations on the lower mental life results a certain view of intellectual since the equilibrium. This equilibrium will be uPset only by a perturbation of the or- elements which serve as its matter. °f We cannot here go into questions of ™uthedepend mental pathology; yet neither can we the°sSsori?f avoid them entirely, since we are motor system, endeavouring to discover the exact relation between body and mind.
We have supposed that the mind travels unceas ingly over the interval comprised between its two extreme limits, the plane of action and the plane of dream. Let us suppose that we have to make a decision. Collecting, organizing the totality of its experience in what we call its character, the mind causes it to converge upon actions in which we shall afterwards find, together with the past Q 226 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, in which is their matter, the unforeseen form which is stamped upon them by personality; but the action is not able to become real unless it succeeds in encasing itself in the actual situation, that is to say, in that particular assemblage of circumstances which is due to the particular position of the body in time and space. Let us suppose, now, that we have to do a piece of intellectual work, to form a conception, to extract a more or less general idea from the multiplicity of our recollections. A wide margin is left to fancy on the one hand, to logical discernment on the other; but, if the idea is to live, it must touch present reality on some side; that is to say, it must be able, from step to step, and by progressive diminutions or contractions of itself, to be more or less acted by the body at the same time as it is thought by the mind. Our body, with the sensations which it receives on the one hand and the movements which it is capable of executing on the other, is, then, that which fixes our mind, and gives it ballast and poise. The activity of the mind goes far beyond the mass of accumulated memories, as this mass of memories itself is infinitely more than the sensations and move ments of the present hour; but these sensations and these movements condition what we may term our attention to life, and that is why every thing depends on their cohesion in the normal work of the mind, as in a pyramid which should stand upon its apex.
CHAP, in MENTAL EQUILIBRIUM 227 If, moreover, we cast a glance at the minute structure of the nervous system as recent dis coveries have revealed it to us, we see every where conducting lines, nowhere any centres. Threads placed end to end, of which the extremities probably touch when the current passes: this is all that is seen. And perhaps this is all there is, if it be true that the body is only a place of meeting and transfer, where stimula tions received result in movements accomplished, as we have supposed it to be throughout this work. But these threads which receive disturbances or stimulations from the external world and return them to it in the form of appropriate reactions, these threads so beautifully stretched from the periphery to the periphery, are just what ensure by the solidity of their connexions and the precision of their interweaving the sensori- motor equilibrium of the body, that is to say its adaptation to the present circumstances. Relax this tension or destroy this equilibrium: everything happens as if attention detached itself from life. Dreams and insanity appear to be little else than this.