The man, when brought to life again, states that he saw in a very short
time all the forgotten events of his life, passing before him with great
rapidity, with their smallest circumstances, and in the very order in
which they occurred."[Footnote: La Perception du Changement, pp. 30-31,
and Matter and Memory, p 200 (Fr p 168).] Hence we can never be
absolutely sure that we have forgotten anything although at any given
time we may be unable to recall it to mind. There is an unconscious
memory.[Footnote: Cf. Samuel Butler's Unconscious Memory.] Speaking of
the profound and yet undeniable reality of the unconscious, Bergson
says,[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp 181-182 (Fr. pp. 152-153). See
also Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue
philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 592, and L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 159-
161 (Mind-Energy).] "Our unwillingness to conceive unconscious psychical
states, is due, above all, to the fact that we hold consciousness to be
the essential property of psychical states, so that a psychical state
cannot, it seems, cease to be conscious without ceasing to exist. But if
consciousness is but the characteristic note of the present, that is to
say, of the actually lived, in short, of the active, then that which
does not act may cease to belong to consciousness without therefore
ceasing to exist in some manner. In other words, in the psychological
domain, consciousness may not be the synonym of existence, but only of
real action or of immediate efficacy; limiting thus the meaning of the
term, we shall have less difficulty in representing to ourselves a
psychical state which is unconscious, that is to say, ineffective.
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