Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/121

 a matter of every-day experience that lessons committed to the motor memory can be automatically repeated; but observation of pathological cases proves that automatism extends much further in this direction than we think. In cases of dementia, we sometimes find that intelligent answers are given to a succession of questions which are not understood: language here works after the manner of a reflex. Aphasics, incapable of uttering a word spontaneously, can recollect without a mistake the words of an air which they sing. Or again, they will fluently repeat a prayer, a series of numbers, the days of the week, or the months of the year. Thus extremely complex mechanisms, subtle enough to imitate intelligence, can work by themselves when once they have been built up, and in consequence usually obey a mere initial impulse of the will. But what takes place while they are being built up? When we strive to learn a lesson, for instance, is not the visual or auditory image which we endeavour to reconstitute by movements already in our mind, invisible though present? Even in the very first recitation, we recognize,