it appears to survive the loss of perception, they conclude that perception is localized in the nervous elements termed sensory. But the truth is that perception is no more in the sensory centres than in the motor centres; it measures the complexity of their relations, and is, in fact, where it appears to be.
Psychologists who have studied infancy are well aware that our representation is at first impersonal.In perception we travel from the periphery—the aggregate of images, to the centre—the body; not vice versa. Only little by little, and as a result of experience, does it adopt our body as a centre and become our representation. The mechanism of this process is, moreover, easy to understand. As my body moves in space, all the other images vary, while that image, my body, remains invariable. I must therefore make it a centre, to which I refer all the other images. My belief in an external world does not come, cannot come, from the fact that I project outside myself sensations that are unextended: how could these sensations ever acquire extension, and whence should I get the notion of exteriority? But if we allow that, as experience testifies, the aggregate of images is given to begin with, I can see clearly how my body comes to occupy, within this aggregate, a privileged position. And I understand also whence arises the notion of inferiority and exteriority, which is, to begin with, merely the distinction between my body and other bodies. For if you start from my body, as is usually done, you will never make me understand how
