Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/158

 memory. But in the latter case, at least, the psychological question has still to be answered: what is the conscious process which the lesion has abolished, and what is the intermediary process that we go through in our normal condition in order to discern words and syllables which are, at first, given to the ear as a continuity of sound?

The difficulty would be insuperable if we really had only auditory impressions on the one hand, and auditory memories on the other. Not so however, if auditory impressions organize nascent movements, capable of scanning the phrase which is heard and of emphasizing its main articulations. These automatic movements of internal accompaniment, at first undecided or uncoördinated, might become more precise by repetition; they would end by sketching a simplified figure in which the listener would find, in their main lines and principal directions, the very movements of the speaker. Thus would unfold itself in consciousness, under the form of nascent muscular sensations, the motor diagram, as it were, of the speech we hear. To adapt our hearing to a new language would then consist, at the outset, neither in modifying the crude sound nor in supplementing the sounds with memories; it would be to coördinate the motor tendencies of the muscular apparatus of the voice to the impressions of the ear; it would be to perfect the motor accompaniment.

In learning a physical exercise, we begin by