Now we may say at once that it is because philosophers have concerned themselves only with the intermediate and, so to speak, impure forms Thus memory- ^na* they have misunderstood the true lmotlr Kbit nature of memory. Instead of dis- "ekdi!?d?ct sociating the two elements, memory- m^ooaieMe image and movement, in order to dis- Sn^why^**" cover subsequently by what series of S°reIS£iiSor operations they come, having each aban- is necessary. dOned some part of its original purity to fuse one with the other, they are apt to consider only the mixed phenomenon which results from their coalescence. This phenomenon, being mixed, presents on the one side the aspect of a motor habit, and on the other that of an image more or less consciously localized. But they will have it that the phenomenon is a simple one. So they must assume that the cerebral mechanism, whether of the brain or of the medulla oblongata or of the cord, which 104 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. H serves as the basis of the motor habit, is at the same time the substratum of the conscious image. Hence the strange hypothesis of recollections stored in the brain, which are supposed to become con scious as though by a miracle, and bring us back to the past by a process that is left unexplained. True, some observers do not make so light of the conscious aspect of the operation, and see in it something more than an epiphenomenon. But, as they have not begun by isolating the memory which retains and sets out the successive repetitions side by side in the form of memory images, since they confound it with the habit which is perfected by use, they are led to believe that the effect of repetition is brought to bear upon one and the same single and indivisible phenomenon which merely grows stronger by recurrence: and, as this phenomenon clearly ends by being merely a motor habit corresponding to a mechanism, cerebral or other, they are led, whether they will or no, to sup pose that some mechanism of this kind was from the beginning behind the image and that the brain is an organ of representation. We are now about to con sider these intermediate states, and distinguish in each of them the part which belongs to nascent action, that is to say of the brain, and the part of independent memory, that is to say of memory- images. What are these states? Being partly motor they must, on our hypothesis, prolong a present perception; but, on the other hand, inasmuch as they are images, they reproduce past perceptions.
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORY IO5 Now the concrete process by which we grasp the past in the present is recognition. Recognition, therefore, is what we have to study, to begin with.
II. Of recognition in general: memory-images and movements. — There are two ways in which it is customary to explain the feeling of is recogni- having seen a thing before. On one tionP •?• r theory, the recognition of a present perception consists in inserting it mentally in its former surroundings. I encounter a man for the first time: I simply perceive him. If I meet him again, I recognize him, in the sense that the concomitant circumstances of the original per ception, returning to my mind, surround the actual image with a setting which is not a setting actually perceived. To recognize, then, according to this theory, is to associate with a present perception the images which were for merly given in connexion with it.1 — But, as it has been justly observed, a renewed perception cannot suggest the concomitant circumstances of the original perception unless the latter is evoked, to begin with, by the present state which resembles it.2 Let A be the first perception; 1 See the systematic treatment of this thesis, supported by experiments, in Lehmann's articles, Ueber Wieder- erkennen (Philos. Studien Wundt, vol. v, p. 96 et seq., and vol. vii, p. 169 et seq.).
2 Pillon, La formation des idees abstraites et generates (Crit.
IO6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n the accompanying circumstances B, C, D, remain associated with it by contiguity. If I call the same perception renewed A', as it is not with A', but with A that the terms B, C, D are bound up, it is necessary, in order to evoke the terms B, C, D, that A' should be first called up by some association of resemblance. And it is of no use to assert that A' is identical with A. For the two terms, though similar, are numerically distinct, and differ at least by this simple fact that A' is a perception, whereas A is but a memory. Of the two interpre tations of which we have spoken, the first, then, melts into the second, which we will now examine. It is alleged that the present perception dives it is not a ^n^° *ne depths of memory in search of the oTperceptfon remembrance of the previous perception and memory. which resembles it: the sense of recog nition would thus come from a bringing together, or a blending, of perception and memory. No doubt, as an acute thinker l has already pointed out, resemblance is a relation established by the mind between terms which it compares and consequently already possesses; so the perception of a resemblance is rather an effect of association than its cause. But, along with this definite and perceived resemblance which Philos. 1885, vol i, p. 208 et seq.). — Cf. Ward, Assimilation and Association (Mind, July 1893 and Oct. 1894).
1 Brochard, La loi de similarite (Revue Philosophique, 1880, vol. ix, p. 258). M. Rabier shows himself also of this opinion in his Lemons de Philosophic, vol. i, Psychologie, pp. 187-192.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IO7 consists in the common element seized and disen gaged by the mind, there is a vague and in some sort objective resemblance, spread over the sur face of the images themselves, which might act perhaps like a physical cause of reciprocal attrac tion.1 And should we ask how it is, then, that we often recognize an object without being able to identify it with a former image, refuge is sought in the convenient hypothesis of cerebral tracks which coincide with each other, of cerebral movements made easier by practice,2 or of percep tive cells communicating with cells where memories are stored.8 In truth, all such theories of recog nition are bound to melt away, in the end, into physiological hypotheses of this kind. What they were aiming at, first, was to make all recog nition issue from a bringing together of per ception and memory; but experience stands over against them, testifying that in most cases recollection emerges only after the perception is recognized. So they are sooner or later forced to relegate to the brain, in the form of a combination between movements or of a connexion between cells, that which they had first declared to be an association of ideas; and to explain the 1 Pillon, loc. tit., p. 207. Cf. James Sully, The human Mind, London, 1892, vol. i, p. 331.
2 H off ding, Ueber Wiedererkennen, Association und •psy- chische Activitdt (Vierteljahresschrift /. wissenschaftlichc Philo sophic, 1889, p. 433.
8 Munk, Ueber die Functiontn der Grosshirnrwde. Berlin, 1881, p. 108 et seq.
IO8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n fact of recognition, — very clear on our view — by the hypothesis, which seems to us very obscure, of a brain which stores up ideas.
But the fact is that the association of a perception with a memory is not enough to account for the process of recognition. For if recognition took place in this way, it would always be obliterated when the memory images had disappeared, and always happen when these images are retained. Psychic blindness, or the inability to recognize perceived objects, would, then, never occur without an inhibi tion of visual memory; and, above all, the inhibi tion of visual memory would invariably produce psychic blindness. But neither consequence is borne out by facts. In a case studied by Wil- brand,1 the patient could describe with her eyes shut the town she lived in and, in imagination, walk through its streets: yet, once in the street, she felt like a complete stranger; she recognized nothing and could not find her way. Facts of the same kind have been observed by Fr. Miiller 2 and Lissauer:3 the patients can summon up the mental picture of an object named to them; they describe it very well; but they cannot recognize it when it is shown to them. The retention, even the conscious retention, of a visual memory is, 1 Die Seelenblindheit als Herderscheinung, Wiesbaden, 1887, p. 56.
2 Ein Beitrag zur Kennlniss der Seelenblindheit (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, vol. xxiv, 1892.
8 Em Fall von Seelenblindheit (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, 1889).
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES IOQ therefore, not enough for the recognition of a simi lar perception. Inversely, in Charcot's case, which has become the classic example of a complete eclipse of visual images,1 not all recognition of perceptions was obliterated. A careful study of the report of the case is conclusive on this point. No doubt the patient failed to recognize the streets and houses of his native town, to the extent of being unable to name them or to find his way about them; yet he knew that they were streets and houses. He no longer recognized his wife and chil dren; yet, when he saw them, he could say that this was a woman, that those were children. None of this would have been possible, had there been psychic blindness in the absolute sense of the word. A certain kind of recognition, then, which we shall need to analyse, was obliterated, not the general faculty of recognition. So we must conclude that not every recognition implies the intervention of a memory image; and, conversely, that we may still be able to call up such images when we have lost the power of identifying perceptions with them. What then is recognition, and how shall we define it?
There is, in the first place, if we carry the process to the extreme, an instantaneous recogni tion, of which the body is capable by itself, without the help of any explicit memory-image. It 1 Reported by Bernard, Un cas de suppression brusque et isolee de la vision mentale (Progres Medical, July 21, 1883).
IIO MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n consists in action and not in representation, in one kind of For instance, I take a walk in a town fh°e°S0Sf seen then for the first time- At everY famiSiiarSuy0L street corner I hesitate, uncertain where nhesSCoT»cion8"! am g°mg- I am in doubt; and I meoto?rao-ed mean by this that alternatives are offered companiment. to my body, that my movement as a whole is discontinuous, that there is nothing in one attitude which foretells and prepares future atti tudes. Later, after prolonged sojourn in the town, I shall go about it mechanically, without having any distinct perception of the objects which I am passing. Now, between these two extremes, the one in which perception has not yet organized the definite movements which accompany it, and the other in which these accompanying movements are organized to a degree which renders perception useless, there is an intermediate state in which the object is perceived, yet provokes movements which are connected, continuous and called up by one another. I began by a state in which I distinguished only my perception; I shall end in a state in which I am hardly conscious of anything but automatism: in the interval there is a mixed state, a perception followed step by step by automatism just impending. Now, if the later perceptions differ from the first percep tion in the fact that they guide the body towards the appropriate mechanical reaction, if, on the other hand, those renewed perceptions appear to the mind under that special aspect which charac- CHAP n MOVEMENTS AND MEMORIES TIT terizes familiar or recognized perceptions, must we not assume that the consciousness of a well- regulated motor accompaniment, of an organized motor reaction, is here the foundation of the sense of familiarity? At the basis of recognition there would thus be a phenomenon of a motor order.
To recognize a common object is mainly to know how to use it. This is so true that early observers gave the name apraxia to that failure of recognition which we call psychic blindness.1 But to know how to use a thing is to sketch out the movements which adapt themselves to it; it is to take a certain attitude, or at least to have a tendency to do so through what the Germans call motor impulses (Bewegungs- antriebe). The habit of using the object has, then, resulted in organizing together movements and perceptions; and the consciousness of these nascent movements, which follow perception after the manner of a reflex, must be here also at the bottom of recognition.
There is no perception which is not prolonged into movement. Ribot 2 and Maudsley 8 long since drew attention to this point. The training of 1 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, p. 181. Allen Starr, Apraxia and Aphasia (Medical Record, Oct. 27, 1888). — Cf. Laquer, Zur Localisation der Sensorischen Aphasie (Neurolog. Centralblati, June 15, 1888), and Dodds, On some central affections of vision (Brain, 1885).
2 Les mouvemcnts, et leur importance psychologique (Revue Philosophique,i8jg, vol. viii, p. 271 et seq.). — Cf. Psychologic de Vattention, Paris, 1889, p. 75.
a Physiology of Mind, p. 206 et seq.
112 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n the senses consists in just the sum of the connexions established between the sensory impression and the movement which makes use of it. As the impression is repeated, the connexion is consolidated. Nor is there anything mysterious in the mechanism of the operation. Our nervous system is evidently arranged with a view to the building up of motor apparatus linked, through the intermediary of cen tres, with sense stimuli; and the discontinuity of the nervous elements, the multiplicity of their terminal branches, which are probably capable of joining in various ways, make possible an unlimited number of connexions between impressions and the corresponding movements. But the mechan ism in course of construction cannot appear to consciousness in the same form as the mechan ism already constructed. There is something which profoundly distinguishes and clearly mani fests those systems of movements which are consoli dated in the organism; and that is, we believe, the difficulty we have in modifying their order. It is, again, the preformation of the movements which follow in the movements which precede, a preformation whereby the part virtually con tains the whole, as when each note of a tune learnt by heart seems to lean over the next to watch its execution.1 If, then, even* perception has 1 In one of the mo<t ingenious chapters of his Psychologic (Paris, 1893, vol. i, p. -42. Fouillee says that the sense of familiarity is largely due to the diminution of the inward sJtock which constitutes surprise.
CHAP, ii MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 113 its organized motor accompaniment, the ordinary feeling of recognition has its root in the conscious ness of this organization.
In fact, we commonly act our recognition before we think it. Our daily life is spent among objects whose very presence invites us to play a part: in this the familiarity of their aspect consists. Motor tendencies would, then, be enough by themselves to give us the feeling of recognition. But we hasten to add that in most cases there is something else besides.
For, while motor apparatus are built up under the influence of perceptions that are analysed And these with increasing precision by the body, £SSetS our Past psychical life is there: it Se°morya-moilg survives— as we shall try to prove- mem£-toZ with all the detail of its events local- ges intervene. jze(j in time. Always inhibited by the practical and useful consciousness of the present moment, that is to say, by the sensori- motor equilibrium of a nervous system con necting perception with action, this memory merely awaits the occurrence of a rift between the actual impression and its corresponding movement to slip in its images. As a rule, when we desire to go back along the course of the past and discover the known, localized, personal memory-image which is related to the present, an effort is necessary, whereby we draw back from the act to which perception inclines us: the latter would urge us towards the future; we have to go backwards into the past. In this sense, 114 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, u movement rather tends to drive away the image. Yet, in one way, it contributes to its approach. For, though the whole series of our past images remains present within us, still the representation which is analogous to the present perception has to be chosen from among all possible repre sentations. Movements, accomplished or merely nascent, prepare this choice, or at the very least mark out the field in which we shall seek the image we need. By the very constitution of our nervous system, we are beings in whom present impressions find their way to appropriate move ments: if it so happens that former images can just as well be prolonged in these movements, they take advantage of the opportunity to slip into the actual perception and get themselves adopted by it. They then appear, in fact, to our conscious ness, though it seems as if they ought, by right, to remain concealed by the present state. So we may say that the movements which bring about mechanical recognition hinder in one way, and encourage in another, recognition by images. In principle, the present supplants the past. But, on the other hand, ]ust because the disappearance of former images is due to their inhibition by our present attitude, those whose shape might fit into this attitude encounter less resistance than the others; and if, then, any one of them is indeed able to overcome the obstacle, it is the image most similar to the present perception that will actually do so.
CHAP. H MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 115 If our analysis is correct, the diseases which affect recognition will be of two widely differing Therefore forms, and facts will show us two kinds one kind of psychic of psychic blindness. For we may preblindness may,,..,.,, be due to a sume that, m some cases, it is the memdistnrbance. 1-1 of motor ory -image which can no longer reappear, habits, not to J '.?
the loss of and that, in other cases, it is merely images. the bond between perception and the accompanying habitual movements which is broken, — perception provoking diffused move ments, as though it were wholly new. Do the facts confirm this hypothesis?
There can be no dispute as to the first point. The apparent abolition of visual memory in psychic blindness is so common a fact that it served, fora time, as a definition of that disorder. We shall have to consider how far, and in what sense, mem ories can really disappear. What interests us for the moment is that cases occur in which there is no recognition and yet visual memory is not altogether lost. Have we here then, as we maintain, merely a disturbance of motor habits, or at most an inter ruption of the chain which unite them to sense perceptions? As no observer has considered a question of this nature, we should be hard put to it for an answer if we had not noticed here and there in their descriptions certain facts which appear to us significant.
The first of these facts is the loss of the sense of direction. All those who have treated the subject of psychic blindness have been struck bythispecu- Il6 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n liarity. Lissauer's patient had completely lost the faculty of finding his way about his own house.1 Fr. Miiller insists on the fact that, while blind men soon learn to find their way, the victim of psychic blindness fails, even after months of practice, to find his way about his own room.2 But is not this faculty of orientation the same thing as the faculty of coordinating the movements of the body with the visual impression, and of mechanically prolong ing perceptions in useful reactions?
There is a second, and even more characteristic fact, and that is the manner in which these patients draw. We can conceive two fashions of drawing. In th^ first we manage, by tentative efforts, to set down here and there on the paper a certain number of points, and we then connect them together, verifying continually the resemblance between the drawing and the object. This is what is known as ' point to point ' drawing. But our habitual method is quite different. We draw with a continuous line, after having looked at, or thought of, our model. How shall we explain such a faculty, except by our habit of discovering at once the organization of the outlines of common objects, that is to say, by a motor tendency to draft their diagram in one continuous line? But if it is 1 Op. cit., Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1889-90, p. 224. Cf. Wil- brand, op. cit., p. 140, and Bernhardt, Eigenthiimlichcr Fall von Hirnerkrankung (Berliner klinischc Wochenschrift, 1877, P- 58i> * Op. cit.. Arch. f. Psychiatric, vol. xxiv, p.
CHAP, n MOVEMENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS 117 just such habits or correspondences which are lost in certain forms of psychic blindness, the patient may still perhaps be able to draw bits of a line which he will connect together more or less well; but he will no longer be able to draw at a stroke, because the tendency to adopt and reproduce the general movement of the outline is no longer pre sent in his hand. Now this is just what experi ment verifies. Lissauer's observations are instruc tive on this head.1 His patient had the greatest difficulty in drawing simple objects; and if he tried to draw them from memory, he traced de tached portions of them chosen at random, and was unable to unite these into a whole. Cases of complete psychic blindness are, however, rare. Those of word-blindness are much more numerous — cases of a loss, that is, of visual recognition limited to the characters of the alphabet. Now it is a fact of common observation that the patient, in such cases, is unable to seize what may be called the movement of the letters when he tries to copy them. He begins to draw them at any point, passing back and forth between the copy and the original to make sure that they agree. And this is the more remarkable in that he often retains unimpaired the faculty of writing from dictation or spon taneously. What is lost is clearly the habit of distinguishing the articulations of the object per ceived, that is to say, of completing the visual Il8 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 perception by a motor tendency to sketch its diagram. Whence we may conclude that such is indeed the primordial condition of recogni tion.
But we must pass now from automatic recog nition, which is mainly achieved through move ments, to that which requires the regular interven tion of memory- images. The first is recognition by ^attention; the second, as we shall see, is attentive recognition.