Whatever idea we may frame of consciousness in itself, such as it would
be if it could work untrammelled, we cannot deny that in a being which
has bodily functions, the chief office of consciousness is to preside
over action and to enlighten choice. Therefore it throws light on the
immediate antecedents of the decision and on those past recollections
which can usefully combine with it; all else remains in shadow." But we
have no more right to say that the past effaces itself as soon as
perceived than to suppose that material objects cease to exist when we
cease to perceive them. Memory, to use a geometrical illustration which
Bergson himself employs, comes into action like the point of a cone
pressing against a plane. The plane denotes the present need,
particularly in relation to bodily action, while the cone stands for all
our total past. Much of this past, indeed most of it, only endures as
unconscious Memory, but it is always capable of coming to the apex of
the cone, i.e., coming into consciousness. So we may say that there are
different planes of Memory, conic sections, if we keep up the original
metaphor, and the largest of these contains all our past. This may be
well described as "the plane of dream."[Footnote: See Matter and Memory,
p. 222 (Fr. p. 186) and the paper L'Effort intellectuel, Revue
philosophique, Jan., 1902, pp. 2 and 25, L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 165
and 199 (Mind-Energy).]
This connexion of Memory with dreams is more fully brought out by
Bergson in his lecture before the Institut psychologique international,
five years after the publication of Matiere et Memoire, entitled Le
Reve.
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