Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/588

 572 NEW BOOKS. and in cheaper form. The importance of the book, and of the first four chapters especially, for ethnic psychology is very great ; the discussions are sound and cautious, and the illustrations well chosen. The work should take its place in a psychological library beside Cajori's shorter History of Mathematics, and Mach's History of Mechanics. A parallel volume is promised, to consist " almost entirely of musical excerpts ... so arranged as to show the continuous process of the de- velopment of the musical art ". Matiere et Memotre : Essai sur la relation du corps a I'esprit. Par HEXRI BERGSOX, Docteur es Lettres. Professeur de Philosophic au Lycee Henri IV. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1896. 8vo, pp. iii., 280. This extremely able and interesting essay is a metaphysical study, which has, as M. Bergson tells us, grown out of a piece of psychological analysis, placed now in the course of the exposition in chapter iii. It maintains an extreme dualism of mind and body, only in order in the end to indicate a continuity between them. The meeting place is found in perception, in which two disparate elements are distinguished, one 'pure perception,' the other memory. Two propositions are laid down which, so far as we can judge from the difficult and over-figurative exposition, form the basis of the whole : the first is that being perceived differs from real existence only in degree not in kind (p. 25), the second that memory in the strict sense differs from perception in kind and is not a function of the brain at all. The author believes that the difficulties of idealism and materialism alike arise from giving to perception (i.e., pure perception) a merely cognitive instead of a practical position. All things being described as ' images ' (equivalent we suppose to ' ideas ' in Locke's sense), representation arises in the particular ' image ' called a body or brain through the selection by the brain of those aspects of a thing which interest it in its reactions upon the world of which the brain forms a part. Matter being the totality of images, perception of matter is the same images referred to the possible action of a determinate image my body. Perception is thus a selection of images, a selection which depends upon what the author terms the ' mdetermination du vouloir '. Consequently objects are perceived not in me (as idealism holds), but where they are in themselves. Perception is in fact a response of the body to other bodies, though it may readily be understood that this view implies certain relations between the movements amongst the particles of things and sensible qualities, to be afterwards explained. Memory, on the other hand, which is, as a matter of fact, always found as an element in ordinary perception, is itself entirely indepen- dent of matter. Under memory we distinguish that form which is really mental habit (like memory of a language), and which takes effect in motor dispositions, from memories in the proper sense which we ' dream ' rather than ' play ' or perform. These latter memories are altogether independent of the brain, and it is urged that there are no memory centres. The brain is but a contrivance for transferring motions from the outside into motions towards the outside. Yet these memories have become attached to perceptions through the movements accompany- ing perception. On this depends recognition, in which a pure memory becomes thus materialised into a memory-image ('image-souvenir ') by its utilising the motor processes which make up the functions of the brain. The author believes this to be borne out by the study of psychic blindness, on which he has some good remarks. There are thus (and this is the main psychological thesis) stages in the mind, the extreme stages being