Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/168

 gently, starting from the ideas, the continuity of sound which the ear perceives. And, more generally, to attend, to recognize intellectually, to interpret, may be summed up in a single operation whereby the mind, having chosen its level, having selected within itself, with reference to the crude perceptions, the point that is exactly symmetrical with their more or less immediate cause, allows to flow towards them the memories that will go out to overlie them.

Such, however, is certainly not the usual way of looking at the matter. The associationist habit is there; and, in accordance with it, we find men maintaining that, by the mere effect of contiguity, the perception of a sound brings back the memory of the sound and memories bring back the corresponding ideas. And then, we have the cerebral lesions which seem to bring about a destruction of memories; more particularly, in the case we are studying, there are the lesions of the brain found in word deafness. Thus psychological observations and clinical facts seem to conspire. Together they seem to point to the existence, within the cortex, of auditory memories slumbering, whether as a physico-chemical modification of certain cells or under some other form. A sensory stimulation is then supposed to awaken them; and, finally, by an intra-cerebral process, perhaps by trans-cortical movements that go to find the complementary representations, they are supposed to evoke ideas.