Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/128

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106
MATTER AND MEMORY
CHAP. II

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 interpretations 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 into the depths of memory in search of theIt is not a mere blend of perception and memory. remembrance of the previous perception which resembles it: the sense of recognition would thus come from a bringing together, or a blending, of perception and memory. No doubt, as an acute thinker[1] 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 similarité (Revue Philosophique, 1880, vol. ix, p. 258). M. Rabier shows himself also of this opinion in his Leçons de Philosophie, vol. i, Psychologie, pp. 187–192.