There is the confusion of representations and
of things. There is the false notion that we may argue that if two
wholes are bound together there must be an equivalent relation of the
parts. Bergson points out in this connexion that the absence or the
presence of a screw can stop a machine or keep it going, but the parts
of the screw do not correspond to the parts of the machine. In his new
introduction to Matiere et Memoire, he said, "There is a close connexion
between a state of consciousness and the brain: this we do not dispute.
But there is also a close connexion between a coat and the nail on which
it hangs, for if the nail is pulled out the coat falls to the ground.
Shall we say then that the shape of the nail gives us the shape of the
coat or in any way corresponds to it? No more are we entitled to
conclude because the psychical fact is hung on to a cerebral state that
there is any parallelism between the two series psychical and
physiological." [Footnote: There must be an awkward misprint "physical"
for "psychical" in the English translation, p. xi.] Our observation and
experience, and science itself, strictly speaking, do not allow us to
assert more than that there exists a certain CORRESPONDENCE between
brain and consciousness. The psychical and the physical are inter-
dependent but not parallel.
Bergson however has more to assert than merely the inadequacy and
falsity of Parallelism or Epiphenomenalism. This last theory merely adds
consciousness to physical facts as a kind of phosphorescent gleam,
resembling, in Bergson's words, a "streak of light following the
movement of a match rubbed along a wall in the dark.
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