" [Footnote: L'Ame
et le Corps, pp. 12-13, in Le Materialisme actuel, or pp. 35-36 of
L'Energie spirituelle (Mind-Energy).] He maintains, as against all this,
the irreducibility of the mental, our utter inability to interpret
consciousness in terms of anything else, the life of the soul being
unique. He further claims that this psychical life is wider and richer
than we commonly suppose. The brain is the organ of attention to life.
What was said in regard to memory and the brain is applicable to all our
mental life. The mind or soul is wider than the brain in every
direction, and the brain's activity corresponds to no more than an
infinitesimal part of the activity of the mind. [Footnote: L'Ame et le
Corps, Le Materialisme actuel, p. 45, L'Energie spirituelle, p. 61.]
This is expressed more clearly in his Presidential Address to the
British Society for Psychical Research at the Aeolian Hall, London,
1913, where he remarked, "The cerebral life is to the mental life what
the movements of the baton of a conductor are to the symphony."
[Footnote: The Times, May 29, 1913.] Such a remark contains fruitful
suggestions to all engaged in Psychical Research, and to all persons
interested in the fascinating study of telepathy. Bergson is of the
opinion that we are far less definitely cut off from each other, soul
from soul, than we are body from body. "It is space," he says, "which
creates multiplicity and distinction. It is by their bodies that the
different human personalities are radically distinct.
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