In either case, its office is limited to the
transmission and division of movements. In the lower organisms,
stimulation takes the form of immediate contact. For example, a jelly-
fish feels a danger when anything touches it, and reacts immediately.
The more immediate the reaction has to be, the more it resembles simple
contact. Higher up the scale, sight and hearing enable the individual to
enter into relation with a greater number of objects and with objects at
a distance. This gives rise to an amount of uncertainty, "a zone of
indetermination," where hesitation and choice come into play. Hence,
says Bergson: "Perception is master of space in the exact measure in
which action is master of time."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 23 (Fr.
p. 19).]
In the paper read before the First International Congress of Philosophy
at Paris in 1900, on Our Belief in the Law of Causality,[Footnote: Notre
croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale,
Sept., 1900, pp. 655-660).] Bergson showed that it has its root in the
co-ordination of our tactile impressions with our visual impressions.
This co-ordination becomes a continuity which generates motor habits or
tendencies to action.
There now comes up for consideration the question as to why this
relation of the organism, to more or less distinct objects, takes the
particular form of conscious perception, and further, why does
everything happen as if this consciousness were born of the internal
movements of the cerebral substance? To answer this question, we must
turn to perceptual processes, as these occur in our everyday life.
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