a tingling in the hand? Whence comes it that a blow on the eyeball gives me a fleeting impression of light? One must read the page where M. Bergson struggles against what seems to me the evidence of the facts. “If, for one reason or another,” he says, “the excitement no longer passes, it would be strange if the corresponding perception took place, since this perception would then put our body in relation with points of space which would no longer invite it to make a choice. Divide the optic nerve of any animal; the disturbance starting from the luminous point is no longer transmitted to the brain, and thence to the motor nerves. The thread which connected the external object to the motor mechanism of the animal by enveloping the optic nerve, is severed; the visual perception has therefore become powerless, and in this powerlessness consists unconsciousness.” This argument is more clever than convincing. It is not convincing, because it consists in exaggerating beyond all reason a very real fact, that of the relation which can be discovered between our sensations and our movements. We believe, with M. Bergson, that it is absolutely correct to see in action the end and the raison d’être of our intelligence and our sensibility. But does it follow that every degree, every shade, every detail of sensation, even the most insignificant, has any importance for the action? The variations of
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