Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/109

 less varied, according to the number and nature of the apparatus which experience has set up within it. Therefore in the form of motor contrivances, and of motor contrivances only, it can store up the action of the past. Whence it results that past images, properly so called, must be otherwise preserved; and we may formulate this first hypothesis:

I. The past survives under two distinct forms: first, in motor mechanisms; secondly, in indepenpendentindependent [sic] recollections.

But then the practical, and consequently the usual function of memory, the utilizing of past experience for present action,—recognition, in short,—must take place in two different ways. Sometimes it lies in the action itself, and in the automatic setting in motion of a mechanism adapted to the circumstances; at other times it implies an effort of the mind which seeks in the past, in order to apply them to the present, those representations which are best able to enter into the present situation. Whence our second proposition:

II. The recognition of a present object is effected by movements when it proceeds from the object, by representations when it issues from the subject.

It is true that there remains yet another question: how these representations are preserved, and what are their relations with the motor mechanisms. We shall go into this subject thoroughly in our next chapter, after we have con-