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Gunn, John Alexander, 1896-1975

"Bergson and His Philosophy"

"[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 315 (Fr. pp. 264-265).] But
as it is a fact that the past survives under two distinct forms, viz.,
"motor mechanisms" and "independent recollections," we find that this
explains why "in all cases where a lesion of the brain attacks a certain
category of recollections, the affected recollections do not resemble
each other by all belonging to the same period, or by any logical
relationship to one another, but simply in that they are all auditive or
all visual or all motor. That which is damaged appears to be the various
sensorial or motor areas, or more often still, those appendages which
permit of their being set going from within the cortex rather than the
recollections themselves."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p.
266).] Going even further than this, by the study of the recognition of
words, and of sensory-aphasia, Bergson shows that "recognition is in no
way affected by a mechanical awakening of memories that are asleep in
the brain. It implies, on the contrary, a more or less high degree of
tension in consciousness, which goes to fetch pure recollections in pure
memory, in order to materialize them progressively, by contact with the
present perception."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p. 266).]
In the face of all this mass of evidence and thoroughness of argument
which Bergson brings forward, we are led to conclude that Memory is
indeed something other than a function of the brain. Criticizing Wundt's
view,[Footnote: As expressed in his Grundzuge der physiologische
psychologie, vol.


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