ion of Change".) It is there
established, by the most positive arguments, (Instead of brutally
connecting the two extremes of matter and mind, one regarded in its
highest action, the other in its most rudimentary mechanism, thus
dooming to certain failure any attempt to explain their actual union, Mr
Bergson studies their living contact at the point of intersection marked
by the phenomena of perception and memory: he compares the higher
point of matter--the brain--and the lower point of mind--certain
recollections--and it is between these two neighbouring points that he
notes a difference, by a method no longer dialectic but experimental.)
that all our past is self-preserved in us, that this preservation only
makes one with the musical character of duration, with the indivisible
nature of change, but that one part only is conscious of it, the part
concerned with action, to which present conceptions supply a body of
actuality.

What we call our present must be conceived neither as a mathematical
point nor as a segment with precise limits: it is the moment of our
history brought out by our attention to life, and nothing, in strict
justice, would prevent it from extending to the whole of this
history. It is not recollection then, but forgetfulness which demands
explanation.

According to a dictum of Ravaisson, of which Mr Bergson makes use, the
explanation must be sought in the body: "it is materiality which causes
forgetfulness in us."

There are, in fact, several planes of memory, from "pure recollection"
not yet interpreted in distinct images down to the same recollection
actualised in embryo sensations and movements begun; and we descend from
the one to the other, from the life of simple "dream" to the life of
practical "drama," along "dynamic schemes." The last of these planes is
the body; a simple instrument of action, a bundle of motive habits, a
group of mechanisms which mind has set up to act. How does it operate in
the work of memory? The task of the brain is every moment to thrust back
into unconsciousness all that part of our past which is not at the
time useful. Minute study of facts shows that the brain is employed in
choosing from the past, in diminishing, simplifying, and extracting
from it all that can contribute to present experience; but it is not
concerned to preserve it. In short, the brain can only explain absences,
not presences. That is why the analysis of memory illustrates the
reality of mind,