Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/253

The idea that the body preserves memories in the mechanical form of cerebral deposits, that theInjuries to the brain affect the motor prolongations through which memories are actualized, or the sensori-motor equilibrium which conditions our 'attention to life.' They cannot destroy memories. loss or decrease of memory consists in their more or less complete destruction, that the heightening of memory and hallucination consists, on the contrary, in an excess of their activity, is not, then, borne out either by reasoning or by facts, The truth is that there is one case, and one only, in which observation would seem at first to suggest this view: we mean aphasia, or, more generally, the disturbance of auditory or visual recognition. This is the only case in which the constant seat of the disorder is in a determined convolution of the brain; but it is also precisely the case in which we do not find a mechanical, immediate and final destruction of certain definite recollections, but rather the gradual and functional weakening of the whole of the affected memory. And we have explained how the cerebral lesion may effect this weakening, without the necessity of supposing any sort of provision of memories stored in the brain. What the injury really attacks are the sensory and motor regions corresponding to this class of perception, and especially those adjuncts through which they may be set in motion from within; so that memory, finding nothing to catch hold of, ends by becoming practically powerless: now, in psychology, powerlessness means unconsciousness. In all other cases, the lesion observed or supposed, never defi-