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MATTER AND MEMORY
CHAP. II
ception and the memory image is to bring clinical observation into conflict with psychological analysis, and that the result is a serious antinomy in the theory of the localization of memories. We are bound to consider what becomes of the known facts when we cease to regard the brain as a storehouse of memories.[1]
Let us admit, for the moment, in order to simpli-
- ↑ The theory which is here sketched out resembles, in one respect, that of Wundt. We will give the common element and the essential difference between them. With Wundt, we believe that distinct perception implies a centrifugal action; and thereby we are led to suppose with him (although in a slightly different sense), that the so-called image centres are rather centres for the grouping of sense-impressions. But whereas, according to Wundt, the centrifugal action lies in an 'apperceptive stimulation,' the nature of which can only be defined in a general manner, and which appears to correspond to what is commonly called the fixing of the attention, we maintain that this centrifugal action bears in each case a distinct form, the very form of that 'virtual object' which tends to actualize itself by successive stages. Hence an important difference in our understanding of the office of the centres. Wundt is led to assume: 1st, a general organ of apperception, occupying the frontal lobe; 2ndly, particular centres which, though most likely incapable of storing images, retain nevertheless a tendency or a disposition to reproduce them. Our contention, on the contrary, is that no trace of an image can remain in the substance of the brain, and that no such centre of apperception can exist; but that there are merely, in that substance, organs of virtual perception, influenced by the intention of the memory, as there are at the periphery organs of real perception, influenced by the action of the object. (See Grundzüge der physiologische Psychologie, vol. i, pp. 320–327.)
