Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/210

 to the rest of the chain.—But, if we look at the matter nearly, we shall see that our memories form a chain of the same kind, and that our character, always present in all our decisions, is indeed the actual synthesis of all our past states. In this epitomized form our previous psychical life exists for us even more than the external world, of which we never perceive more than a very small part, whereas on the contrary we use the whole of our lived experience. It is true that we possess merely a digest of it, and that our former perceptions, considered as distinct individualities, seem to us to have completely disappeared, or to appear again only at the bidding of their caprice. But this semblance of complete destruction or of capricious revival is due merely to the fact that actual consciousness accepts at each moment the useful, and rejects in the same breath the superfluous. Ever bent upon action, it can only materialize those of our former perceptions which can ally themselves with the present perception to take a share in the final decision. If it is necessary, when I would manifest my will at a given point of space, that my consciousness should go successively through those intermediaries or those obstacles of which the sum constitutes what we call distance in space, so on the other hand it is useful, in order to throw light on this action, that my consciousness should jump the interval of time which separates the actual situation from a former one which resembles it; and as consciousness goes