nitely localized, acts by the disturbance which it causes to the whole of the sensori-motor connexions, either by damaging or by breaking up this mass: whence results a breach or a simplifying of the intellectual equilibrium, and, by ricochet, the disorder or the disjunction of memory. The doctrine which makes of memory an immediate function of the brain—a doctrine which raises insoluble theoretical difficulties—a doctrine the complexity of which defies all imagination, and the results of which are incompatible with the data of introspection—cannot even count upon the support of cerebral pathology. All the facts and all the analogies are in favour of a theory which regards the brain as only an intermediary between sensation and movement, which sees in this aggregate of sensations and movements the pointed end of mental life—a point ever pressed forward into the tissue of events, and, attributing thus to the body the sole function of directing memory towards the real and of binding it to the present, considers memory itself as absolutely independent of matter. In this sense, the brain contributes to the recall of the useful recollection, but still more to the provisional banishment of all the others. We cannot see how memory could settle within matter; but we do clearly understand how—according to the profound saying of a contemporary philosopher—materiality begets oblivion.[1]
- ↑ Ravaisson, La philosophie en France au xixe siècle, 3rd edit., p. 176.
