system is no longer the depository of these states, we must change their domicile; and where are they to be placed? Here the theory becomes obscure and vague, and custom renders it difficult to understand the situation of the mind outside the body. M. Bergson places memory in planes of consciousness far removed from action, and perception he places in the very object we perceive.
If I look at my bookcase, my thought is in my books; if I look at the sky, my thought is in a star.[1] It is very difficult to criticise ideas such as these, because one is never certain that one understands them. I will therefore not linger over them, notwithstanding the mistrust which they inspire in me.
But what seems to me to require proof is the function M. Bergson is led to attribute to the sensory nerves. To his mind, it is not exact to say that the excitement of a sensory nerve excites sensation. This would be a wrong description, for, according to him, every nerve, even a sensory one, serves as a motor; it conducts the disturbance which, passing through the central commutator, flows finally into the muscles. But then, whence comes it that I think I feel a sensation when my sensory nerve is touched? Whence comes it that a pressure on the epitrochlear nerve gives me
- ↑ Matière et Mémoire, p. 31
