Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/249

 If, moreover, we cast a glance at the minute structure of the nervous system as recent discoveries have revealed it to us, we see everywhere conducting lines, nowhere any centres. Threads placed end to end, of which the extremities probably touch when the current passes: this is all that is seen. And perhaps this is all there is, if it be true that the body is only a place of meeting and transfer, where stimulations received result in movements accomplished, as we have supposed it to be throughout this work. But these threads which receive disturbances or stimulations from the external world and return them to it in the form of appropriate reactions, these threads so beautifully stretched from the periphery to the periphery, are just what ensure by the solidity of their connexions and the precision of their interweaving the sensori-motor equilibrium of the body, that is to say its adaptation to the present circumstances. Relax this tension or destroy this equilibrium: everything happens as if attention detached itself from life. Dreams and insanity appear to be little else than this.

We were speaking just now of the hypothesis which attributes sleep an interruption of the solidarity among the neurons. Even if we do not accept this hypothesis (which is, however, confirmed by some curious experiments) we must suppose,