Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/345

images rather than other images, and, finally, how by the combined work of body and mind the earliest general ideas are formed. The interest of a living being lies in discovering in the present situation that which resembles a former situation, and then in placing alongside of that present situation what preceded and followed the previous one, in order to profit by past experience. Of all the associations which can be imagined, those of resemblance and contiguity are therefore at first the only associations that have a vital utility. But, in order to understand the mechanism of these associations and above all the apparently capricious selection which they make of memories, we must place ourselves alternately on the two extreme planes of consciousness which we have called the plane of action and the plane of dream. In the first are displayed only motor habits; these may be called associations which are acted or lived, rather than represented: here resemblance and contiguity are fused together, for analogous external situations, as they recur, have ended by connecting together certain bodily movements, and thenceforward the same automatic reaction, in which we unfold these contiguous movements, will also draw from the situation which occasions them its resemblance with former situations. But, as we pass from movements to images and from poorer to richer images, resemblance and contiguity part company: they end by contrasting sharply with each other on that