Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/122

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MATTER AND MEMORY
CHAP. II

by a vague feeling of uneasiness, any error we have made, as though from the obscure depths of consciousness we received a sort of warning.[1] Concentrate your mind on that sensation, and you will feel that the complete image is there, but evanescent, a phantasm that disappears just at the moment when motor activity tries to fix its outline. During some recent experiments (which, however, were undertaken with quite a different purpose),[2] the subjects averred that they felt just such an impression. A series of letters, which they were asked to remember, was held before their eyes for a few seconds. But, to prevent any accentuating of the letters so perceived by appropriate movements of articulation, they were asked to repeat continuously a given syllable while their eyes were fixed on the image. From this resulted a special psychical state; the subjects felt themselves to be in complete possession of the visual image, although unable to produce any part of it on demand: to their great surprise the line disappeared. 'According to one observer, the basis was a Gesammtvorstellung, a sort of all-embracing complex idea in which the parts have an indefinitely felt unity.'[3]

  1. See, on the subject of this sense of error, the article by Müller and Schumann, Experimentelle Beiträge zur Untersuchung des Gedäcthtnisses (Zeitschr. f. Psych. u. Phys. der Sinnesorgane (Dec, 1893, p. 305).
  2. W. G. Smith, The Relation of Attention to Memory. (Mind, Jan. 1895.)
  3. Ibid. loc. cit., p. 23.