Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/130

 fact of recognition,—very clear on our view—by the hypothesis, which seems to us very obscure, of a brain which stores up ideas.

But the fact is that the association of a perception with a memory is not enough to account for the process of recognition. For if recognition took place in this way, it would always be obliterated when the memory images had disappeared, and always happen when these images are retained. Psychic blindness, or the inability to recognize perceived objects, would, then, never occur without an inhibition of visual memory; and, above all, the inhibition of visual memory would invariably produce psychic blindness. But neither consequence is borne out by facts. In a case studied by Wilbrand, the patient could describe with her eyes shut the town she lived in and, in imagination, walk through its streets: yet, once in the street, she felt like a complete stranger; she recognized nothing and could not find her way. Facts of the same kind have been observed by Fr. Müller and Lissauer: the patients can summon up the mental picture of an object named to them; they describe it very well; but they cannot recognize it when it is shown to them. The retention, even the conscious retention, of a visual memory is,