Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/247

 on the memory, however simple we suppose it to be, has occupied a certain time. The perceptions which filled the first period of this interval, and now form with the later perceptions an undivided memory, were then really 'loose' as long as the decisive part of the event had not occurred and drawn them along. Between the disappearance of a memory with its various preliminary details, and the abolition, in retrogressive amnesia, of a greater or less number of recollections previous to a given event, there is, then, merely a difference of degree and not of kind.

From these various considerations on the lower mental life results a certain view of intellectual equilibrium. This equilibrium will be upset only by a perturbation of the elements which serve as its matter. We cannot here go into questions of mental pathology; yet neither can we avoid them entirely, since we are endeavouring to discover the exact relation between body and mind.

We have supposed that the mind travels unceasingly over the interval comprised between its two extreme limits, the plane of action and the plane of dream. Let us suppose that we have to make a decision. Collecting, organizing the totality of its experience in what we call its character, the mind causes it to converge upon actions in which we shall afterwards find, together with the past