Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/318

of all distinguished from matter, we can conceive an infinite number of degrees between matter and fully developed spirit—a spirit capable of action which is not only undetermined, but also reasonable and reflective. Each of these successive degrees, which measures a growing intensity of life, corresponds to a higher tension of duration and is made manifest externally by a greater development of the sensori-motor system. But let us consider this nervous system itself: we note that its increasing complexity appears to allow an ever greater latitude to the activity of the living being, the faculty of waiting before reacting, and of putting the excitation received into relation with an ever richer variety of motor mechanisms. Yet this is only the outward aspect; and the more complex organization of the nervous system, which seems to assure the greater independence of the living being in regard to matter, is only the material symbol of that independence itself, that is to say of the inner energy which allows the being to free itself from the rhythm of the flow of things, and to retain in an ever higher degree the past in order to influence ever more deeply the future,—the symbol, in the special sense which we give to the word, of its memory. Thus, between brute matter and the mind most capable of reflexion there are all possible intensities of memory or, what comes to the same thing, all the degrees of freedom. On the first hypothesis, that which expresses the distinction be-