perceived really measures, therefore, the greater or less imminence of a danger, the nearer or more remote fulfilment of a promise. And, conse quently, our perception of an object distinct from our body, separated from our body by an interval, never expresses anything but a virtual action. But the more the distance decreases between this object and our body (the more, in other words, the danger becomes urgent or the promise immedi ate), the more does virtual action tend to pass into real action. Suppose the distance reduced to zero, that is to say that the object to be perceived coincides with our body, that is to say again, that our body is the object to be perceived. Then it is no longer virtual action, but real action, that this specialized perception will express: and this is exactly what affection is. Our sensations are, then, to our perceptions that which the real action of our body is to its possible or virtual action. Its virtual action concerns other objects, and is manifested within those objects; its real action concerns itself, and is manifested within its own sub stance. Everything then will happen as if, by a true return of real and virtual actions to their points of application or of origin, the external images were reflected by our body into surrounding space, and the real actions arrested by it within itself. And that is why its surface, the common limit of the external and the internal, is the only portion of space which is both perceived and felt.
CHAP, i THE IMAGE, APART FROM SENSATION 59 That is to say, once more, that my perception is outside my body, and my affection within it. Just as external objects are perceived by me where they are, in themselves and not in me, so my affective states are experienced there where they occur, that is, at a given point in my body. Consider the system of images which is called the material world. My body is one of them. Around this image is grouped the representation, i.e. its eventual influence on the others. Within it occurs affection, i.e. its actual effort upon itself. Such is indeed the fundamental differ ence which every one of us naturally makes between an image and a sensation. When we say that the image exists outside us, we signify by this that it is external to our body. When we speak of sensation as an internal state, we mean that it arises within in our body. And this is why we affirm that the totality of perceived images subsists, even if our body disappears, whereas we know that we cannot annihilate our body with out destroying our sensations.
Hence we begin to see that we must correct, at least in this particular, our theory of pure percep tion. We have argued as though our That is to say pure perception were a part of the images, exists only in detached, as such, from their entirety: as theory; in...fact it is though, expressing the virtual action of always mixed, ". ',,, with aflec- the object upon our body, or of our body upon the object, perception merely iso lated from the total object that aspect of it which 60 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i interests us. But we have to take into account the fact that our body is not a mathematical point in space, that its virtual actions are complicated by and impregnated with real actions, or, in other words, that there is no perception without affection. Affection is, then, that part or aspect of the inside of our body which we mix with the image of external bodies; it is what we must first of all subtract from perception to get the image in its purity. But the psychologist who shuts his eyes to the difference of function and nature between perception and sensation, — the latter involving a real action, and the former a merely possible action, — can only find between them a difference of degree. Because sensation (on account of the confused effort which it involves) is only vaguely loca lized, he declares it unextended, and thence makes sensation in general the simple element from which we obtain by composition all external images. The truth is that affection is not the primary matter of which perception is made; it is rather the impurity with which perception is alloyed.
Here we grasp, at its origin, the error which leads the psychologist to consider sensation as unextended and perception as an aggregate of sensations. This error is reinforced, as we shall see, by illusions derived from a false conception of the role of space and of the nature of extensity. But it has also the support of misinterpreted facts, which we must now examine.
It appears, in the first place, as if the localiza- CHAP, i THE IMAGE, APART FROM SENSATION 6l tion of an affective sensation in one part of the why aflec- body were a matter of gradual training. to°beiSeSfy * A certain time elapses before the child unextended. can touch with the finger the precise point where it has been pricked. — The fact is indisputable; but all that can be concluded from it is that some tentative essays are required to co-ordinate the painful impressions on the skin, which has received the prick, with the impressions of the muscular sense which guides the movement of arm and hand. Our internal affections, like our external perceptions, are of different kinds. These kinds, like those of perception, are discon tinuous, separated by intervals which are filled up in the course of education. But it does not at all follow that there is not, for each affection, an immediate localization of a certain kind, a local colour which is proper to it. We may go further: if the affection has not this local colour at once, it will never have it. For all that education can do is to associate with the actual affective sensation the idea of a certain potential perception of sight and touch, so that a definite affection may evoke the image of a visual or tactile impression, equally definite. There must be, therefore, in this affec tion itself, something which distinguishes it from other affections of the same kind, and permits of its reference to this or that potential datum of sight or touch rather than to any other. But is not this equivalent to saying that affection possesses, from the outset, a certain determination of extensity?
62 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i Again, it is alleged that there are erroneous localizations; for example, the illusion of those who have lost a limb (an illusion which requires, however, further examination). But what can we conclude from this beyond the fact that education, once acquired, persists, and that such data of memory as are more useful in practical life supplant those of immediate consciousness? It is indispen sable, in view of action, that we should translate our affective experience into eventual data of sight, touch, and muscular sense. When once this translation is made, the original pales; but it never could have been made if the original had not been there to begin with, and if sensation had not been, from the beginning, localized by its own power and in its own way.
But the psychologist has much difficulty in accepting this idea from common sense. Just if we make as perception, in his view, could be in e?tera-s0?atiai tne things perceived only if they had perception perception, so a sensation cannot be in inexplicable, ^g nerve unless the nerve feels. Now it is evident that the nerve does not feel. So he takes sensation away from the point where common sense localizes it, carries it towards the brain, on which, more than on the nerve, it appears to depend, and logically should end by placing it in the brain. But it soon becomes clear that if it is not at the point where it appears to arise, neither can it be anywhere else: if it is not in the nerve, neither is it in the brain; for to explain its CHAP, i NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 63 projection from the centre to the periphery a certain force is necessary, which must be attributed to a consciousness that is to some extent active. Therefore, he must go further; and, after having made sensations converge towards the cerebral centre, must push them out of the brain, and thereby out of space. So he has to imagine on the one hand sensations that are absolutely unextended, and on the other hand an empty space indifferent to the sensations which are projected into it: henceforth he will exhaust himself in efforts of every kind to make us understand how unextended sensations acquire extensity, and why they choose for their abode this or that point of space rather than any other. But this doctrine is not only incapable of showing us clearly how the unextended takes on extension; it renders affection, extension, and representation equally inexplicable. It must assume affective states as so many absolutes, of which it is impossible to say why they appear in or disappear from con sciousness at definite moments. The passage from affection to representation remains wrapt in an equally impenetrable mystery, because, once again, you will never find in internal states, which are supposed to be simple and unextended, any reason why they should prefer this or that particular order in space. And, finally, representation itself must be posited as an absolute: we cannot guess either its origin or its goal.
Everything becomes clearer, on the other hand, 64 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i if we start from representation itself, that is to say from the totality of perceived images. My percep tion, in its pure state, isolated from memory, does not go on from my body to other bodies; it is, to begin with, in the aggregate of bodies, then gradu ally limits itself and adopts my body as a centre. And it is led to do so precisely by experience of the double faculty, which this body possesses, of per forming actions and feeling affections; in a word, by experience of the sensori-motor power of a certain image, privileged among other images. For, on the one hand, this image always occupies the centre of representation, so that the other images range themselves round it in the very order in which they might be subject to its action; on the other hand, I know it from within, by sensations which I term affective, instead of knowing only, as in the case of the other images, its outer skin. There is then, in the aggregate of images, a privileged image, perceived in its depths and no longer only on the surface — the seat of affection and, at the same time, the source of action: it is this particular image which I adopt as the centre of my universe and as the physical basis of my personality.
But before we go on to establish the precise rela tion between the personality and the images in which it dwells, let us briefly sum up, contrast ing it with the analyses of current psychology, the theory of pure perception which we have just sketched out.
We will return, for the sake of simplicity, to CHAP, i NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 65 the sense of sight, which we chose as our example. Psychology has accustomed us to assume The result of J &J positing sensa- the elementary sensations corresponding tions and J then con- to the impressions received by the rods strncting perception and cones of the retina. With these with them.
sensations it goes on to reconstitute visual perception. But, in the first place, there is not one retina, there are two; so that we have to explain how two sensations, held to be distinct, combine to form a single perception correspond ing to what we call a point in space.
Suppose this problem solved. The sensations in question are unextended; how will they ac quire extension? Whether we see in extensity a framework ready to receive sensations, or an effect of the mere simultaneity of sensations co existing in consciousness without coalescing, in either case something new is introduced with extensity, something unaccounted for; the process by which sensation arrives at extension, and the choice by each elementary sensation of a definite point in space, remain alike unexplained, We will leave this difficulty, and suppose visual extension constituted. How does it in its turn re unite with tactile extension? All that my vision perceives in space is verified by my touch. Shall we say that objects are constituted by just the co-operation of sight and touch, and that the agree ment of the two senses in perception may be explained by the fact that the object perceived is their common product? But how could there be 66 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i anything common, in the matter of quality, between an elementary visual sensation and a tactile sensa tion, since they belong to two different genera? The correspondence between visual and tactile extension can only be explained, therefore, by the parallelism of the order of the visual sensations with the order of the tactile sensations. So we are now obliged to suppose, over and above visual sensations, over and above tactile sensations, a certain order which is common to both, and which consequently must be independent of either. We may go further: this order is independent of our individual perception, since it is the same for all men, and constitutes a material world in which effects are linked with causes, in which phenomena obey laws. We are thus led at last to the hypothesis of an objective order, independent of ourselves; that is to say, of a material world distinct from sensation.
We have had, as we advanced, to multiply our irreducible data, and to complicate more and more the simple hypothesis from which we started. But have we gained anything by it? Though the matter which we have been led to posit is indis pensable in order to account for the marvellous accord of sensations among themselves, we still know nothing of it, since we must refuse to.it all the qualities perceived, all the sensations of which it has only to explain the correspondence. It is not, then, it cannot be, anything of what we know, anything of what we imagine. It remains a mysterious entity.
CHAP. I NATURAL EXTENSION OF IMAGES 67 But our own nature, the office and the function of our personality, remain enveloped in equal mystery. For these elementary unextended sen sations which develop themselves in space, whence do they come, how are they born, what purpose do they serve? We must posit them as so many absolutes, of which we see neither the origin nor the end. And even supposing that we must distinguish, in each of us, between the spirit and the body, we can know nothing either of body or of spirit, nor of the relation between them.
Now in what does this hypothesis of ours consist, and at what precise point does it part company Action, not with, the other? Instead of starting from JnoSdbSthe affection, of which we can say nothing, starting point. since there is no reason why it should be what it is rather than anything else, we start from action, that is to say from our faculty of effecting changes in things, a faculty attested by consciousness and towards which all the powers of the organized body are seen to converge. So we place ourselves at once in the midst of extended images; and in this material universe we perceive centres of inde- termination, characteristic of life. In order that actions may radiate from these centres, the move ments or influences of the other images must be on the one hand received and on the other utilized. Living matter, in its simplest form, and in a homogeneous state, accomplishes this function simultaneously with those of nourishment and repair. The progress of such matter consists in 68 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i sharing this double labour between two categories of organs, the purpose of the first, called organs of nutrition, being to maintain the second: these last are made for action; they have as their simple type a chain of nervous elements, connect ing two extremities of which the one receives external impressions and the other executes move ments. Thus, to return to the example of visual perception, the office of the rods and cones is merely to receive excitations which will be subsequently elaborated into movements, either accomplished or nascent. No perception can result from this, and nowhere, in the nervous system, are there conscious centres; but perception arises from the same cause which has brought into being the chain of nervous elements, with the organs which sustain them and with life in general. It expresses and measures the power of action in the living being, the indetermination of the movement or of the action which will follow the receipt of the stimulus. This indetermination, as we have shown, will ex press itself in a reflexion upon themselves, or better in a division, of the images which surround our body; and, as the chain of nervous elements which receives, arrests, and transmits movements is the seat of this indetermination and gives its measure, our perception will follow all the detail and will appear to express all the variations of the nervous elements themselves. Perception, in its pure state, is then, in very truth, a part of things. And as for affective sensation, it does CHAP. 1 PURE PERCEPTION 69 not spring spontaneously from the depths of consciousness to extend itself, as it grows weaker, in space; it is one with the necessary modifi cations to which, in the midst of the surround ing images that influence it, the particular image that each one of us terms his body is subj ect.
Such is our simplified, schematic theory of exter nal perception. It is the theory of pure percep tion. If we went no further, the part of con sciousness in perception would thus be confined to threading on the continuous string of memory an uninterrupted series of instantaneous visions, which would be a part of things rather than of ourselves. That this is the chief office of con sciousness in external perception is indeed what we may deduce a priori from the very defini tion of living bodies. For though the function of these bodies is to receive stimulations in order to elaborate them into unforeseen reactions, still the choice of the reaction cannot be the work of chance. This choice is likely to be inspired by past experience, and the reaction does not take place without an appeal to the memories which analogous situations may have left behind them. The indetermination of acts to be accomplished requires then, if it is not to be confounded with pure caprice, the preservation of the images per ceived. It may be said that we have no grasp of the future without an equal and corresponding 70 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i outlook over the past, that the onrush of our activity makes a void behind it into which memories flow, and that memory is thus the reverbera tion, in the sphere of consciousness, of the inde- termination of our will. — But the action of memory goes further and deeper than this superficial glance would suggest. The moment has come to reinstate memory in perception, to correct in this way the element of exaggeration in our conclusions, and so to determine with more precision the point of contact between con sciousness and things, between the body and the spirit.
We assert, at the outset, that if there be memory, that is, the survival of past images, these images must constantly mingle with our percep- Perception is. ° r.
less objective tion of the present, and may even take its in fact than in _.-.. -,..
theory because place. For if they have survived it is with it includes.
a share oi a view to utility: at every moment they memory...
complete our present experience, enrich ing it with experience already acquired; and, as the latter is ever increasing, it must end by covering up and submerging the former. It is indisputable that the basis of real, and so to speak instantaneous, intuition, on which our perception of the external world is developed, is a small matter compared with all that memory adds to it. Just because the recollection of earlier analogous intuitions is more useful than the intuition itself, being bound up in memory with the whole series of subsequent events, and capable thereby of throw- CHAP, i PURE PERCEPTION 71 ing a better light on our decision, it supplants the real intuition of which the office is then merely — we shall prove it later — to call up the recollection, to give it a body, to render it active and thereby actual. We had every right, then, to say that the coincidence of perception with the object perceived exists in theory rather than in fact. We must take into account that perception ends by being merely an occasion for remembering, that we measure in practice the degree of reality by the degree of utility, and, finally, that it is our interest to regard as mere signs of the real those immediate intuitions which are, in fact, part and parcel with reality. But here we discover the mistake of those who say that to perceive is to project externally unextended sensations which have been drawn from our own depths, and then to develop them in space. They have no difficulty in showing that our com plete perception is filled with images which belong to us personally, with exteriorized (that is to say recollected) images; but they forget that an impersonal basis remains in which perception coincides with the object perceived; and which is, in fact, externality itself.
The capital error, the error which, passing over from psychology into metaphysic, shuts us out in the end from the knowledge both of tion and pure body and of spirit, is that which sees constantly only a difference of intensity, instead of a difference of nature, between pure 72 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, i perception and memory. Our perceptions are un doubtedly interlaced with memories, and inversely, a memory, as we shall show later, only becomes actual by borrowing the body of some perception into which it slips. These two acts, perception and recollection, always interpenetrate each other, are always exchanging something of their sub stance as by a process of endosmosis. The proper office of psychologists would be to dissociate them, to give back to each its natural purity; in this way many difficulties raised by psychology, and perhaps also by metaphysics, might be les sened. But they will have it that these mixed states, compounded, in unequal proportions, of pure perception and pure memory, are simple. And so we are condemned to an ignorance alike of pure memory and of pure perception; to knowing only a single kind of phenomenon which will be called now memory and now per ception, according to the predominance in it of one or other of the two aspects; and, con sequently, to finding between perception and memory only a difference in degree and not in kind. The first effect of this error, as we shall see in detail, is to vitiate profoundly the theory of memory; for if we make recollection merely a weakened perception we misunderstand the essential difference between the past and the present, we abandon all hope of understanding the phenomena of recognition, and, more gener ally, the mechanism of the unconscious. But, in- CHAP, i THE PROBLEM OF MATTER 73 versely, if recollection is regarded as a weakened perception, perception must be regarded as a stronger recollection. We are driven to argue as though it was given to us after the manner of a memory, as an internal state, a mere modification of our personality; and our eyes are closed to the primordial and fundamental act of perception, — the act, constituting pure perception, whereby we place ourselves in the very heart of things. And thus the same error, which manifests itself in psychology by a radical incapacity to explain the mechanism of memory, will in metaphysics pro foundly influence the idealistic and realistic conceptions of matter.