Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/192

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CHAPTER III

OF THE SURVIVAL OF IMAGES. MEMORY AND MIND.

To sum up briefly the preceding chapters. We have distinguished three processes, pure memory, memory-image, and perception, of which no one, in fact, occurs apart from the others. Perception is never a mere contact of the mind with theFig. 2. object present; it is impregnated with memory-images which complete it as they interpret it. The memory-image, in its turn, partakes of the 'pure memory,' which it begins to materialize, and of the perception in which it tends to embody itself: regarded from the latter point of view, it might be defined as a nascent perception. Lastly, pure memory, though independent in theory, manifests itself as a rule only in the coloured and living image which reveals it. Symbolizing these three terms by the consecutive segments AB, BC, CD, of the same straight line

170