Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/84

 Again, it is alleged that there are erroneous localizations; for example, the illusion of those who have lost a limb (an illusion which requires, however, further examination). But what can we conclude from this beyond the fact that education, once acquired, persists, and that such data of memory as are more useful in practical life supplant those of immediate consciousness? It is indispensable, in view of action, that we should translate our affective experience into eventual data of sight, touch, and muscular sense. When once this translation is made, the original pales; but it never could have been made if the original had not been there to begin with, and if sensation had not been, from the beginning, localized by its own power and in its own way.

But the psychologist has much difficulty in accepting this idea from common sense. Just as perception, in his view, could be in the things perceived only if they had perception, so a sensation cannot be in the nerve unless the nerve feels. Now it is evident that the nerve does not feel. So he takes sensation away from the point where common sense localizes it, carries it towards the brain, on which, more than on the nerve, it appears to depend, and logically should end by placing it in the brain. But it soon becomes clear that if it is not at the point where it appears to arise, neither can it be anywhere else: if it is not in the nerve, neither is it in the brain; for to explain its