Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/199

 present instant? Quite evidently, it is both on this side and on that; and what I call 'my present' has one foot in my past and another in my future. In my past, first, because 'the moment in which I am speaking is already far from me'; in my future, next, because this moment is impending over the future: it is to the future that I am tending, and could I fix this indivisible present, this infinitesimal element of the curve of time, it is the direction of the future that it would indicate. The psychical state, then, that I call 'my present,' must be both a perception of the immediate past and a determination of the immediate future. Now the immediate past, in so far as it is perceived, is, as we shall see, sensation, since every sensation translates a very long succession of elementary vibrations; and the immediate future, in so far as it is being determined, is action or movement. My present, then, is both sensation and movement; and, since my present forms an undivided whole, then the movement must be linked with the sensation, must prolong it in action. Whence I conclude that my present consists in a joint system of sensations and movements. My present is, in its essence, sensori-motor.

This is to say that my present consists in the consciousness that I have of my body. Having extension in space, my body experiences sensations and at the same time executes movements.