eptive
functions along the animal series from the protoplasm to the higher
vertebrates; or if, with him, we analyse the task of the body, and
discover that the nervous system is manifested in its very structure as,
before all, an instrument of action. Have we not already besides proof
of this in the fact that each of us always appears in his own eyes to
occupy the centre of the world he perceives?

The "Riquet" of Anatole France voices Mr Bergson's view: "I am always in
the centre of everything, and men and beasts and things, for or against
me, range themselves around."

But direct analysis leads us still more plainly to the same conclusion.

Let us take the perception of bodies. It is easy to show--and I regret
that I cannot here reproduce Mr Bergson's masterly demonstration--that
the division of matter into distinct objects with sharp outlines is
produced by a selection of images which is completely relative to our
practical needs.

"The distinct outlines which we assign to an object, and which bestow
upon it its individuality, are nothing but the graph of a certain kind
of influence which we should be able to employ at a certain point in
space: it is the plan of our future actions which is submitted to our
eyes, as in a mirror, when we perceive the surfaces and edges of things.
Remove this action, and in consequence the high roads which it makes
for itself in advance by perception, in the web of reality, and
the individuality of the body will be reabsorbed in the universal
interaction which is without doubt reality itself." Which is tantamount
to saying that "rough bodies are cut in the material of nature by a
perception of which the scissors follow, in some sort, the dotted line
along which the action would pass." ("Creative Evolution", page 12.)

Bodies independent of common experience do not then appear, to an
attentive criticism, as veritable realities which would have an
existence in themselves. They are only centres of co-ordination for our
actions. Or, if you prefer it, "our needs are so many shafts of light
which, when played upon the continuity of perceptible qualities, produce
in them the outline of distinct bodies." ("Matter and Memory", page
220.) Does not science too, after its own fashion, resolve the atom into
a centre of intersecting relations, which finally extend by degrees to
the entire universe in an indissoluble interpenetration?

A qualitative continuity, imperceptibly shaded off, over whi