[Footnote: Notre
croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale,
1900), p. 658.] A little examination shows us that distance stands for
the degree in which other bodies are protected, as it were, against the
action of my body against them, and equally too for the degree in which
my body is protected from them.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la
fausse reconnaissance in L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 117-161 (Mind-
Energy), or Revue philosophique, 1908, pp. 561-593.] Perception is
utilitarian in character and has reference to bodily action, and we
detach from all the images coming to us those which interest us
practically.
Bergson then examines the physiological aspects of the perceptual
process. Beginning with reflex actions and the development of the
nervous system, he goes on to discuss the functions of the spinal cord
and the brain. He finds in regard to these last two that "there is only
a difference of degree--there can be no difference in kind--between what
is called the perceptive faculty of the brain and the reflex functions
of the spinal cord. The cord transforms into movements the stimulation
received, the brain prolongs into reactions which are merely nascent,
but in the one case as in the other, the function of the nerve substance
is to conduct, to co-ordinate, or to inhibit movements.[Footnote: Matter
and Memory, pp. 10-11 (Fr. p. 9).] As we rise in the organic series we
find a division of physiological labour. Nerve cells appear, are
diversified and tend to group themselves into a system; at the same time
the animal reacts by more varied movements to external stimulation.
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