Bergson has been reluctant to commit himself on the question of
immortality, but he of late has become quite convinced of it. He even
goes so far as to think it possible that we may find experimental
evidence of personal persistence after death. This at least we might
infer from his recent acceptance of the presidency of the British
Society for Psychical Research. In his opening address before the
Society, May 28, 1913, he discussed the question of telepathy and in
that connection he explained his theory of the relation of mind and
brain in the following language. I quote from the report in the London
_Times_:
The _role_ of the brain is to bring back the remembrance of an
action, to prolong the remembrance in movements. If one could see
all that takes place in the interior of the brain, one would find
that that which takes place there corresponds to a small part only
of the life of the mind. The brain simply extracts from the life of
the mind that which is capable of representation in movement. The
cerebral life is to the mental life what the movements of the baton
of a conductor are to the Symphony.
The brain, then, is that which allows the mind to adjust itself
exactly to circumstances. It is the organ of attention to life.
Should it become deranged, however slightly, the mind is no longer
fitted to the circumstances; it wanders, dreams. Many forms of
mental alienation are nothing else. But from this it results that
one of the _roles_ of the brain is to limit the vision of the
mind, to render its action more efficacious. This is what we
observe in regard to the memory, where the _role_ of the brain is
to mask the useless part of our past in order to allow only the
useful remembrances to appear. Certain useless recollections, or
dream remembrances, manage nevertheless to appear also, and to form
a vague fringe around the distinct recollections. It would not be
at all surprising if perceptions of the organs of our senses,
useful perceptions, were the result of a selection or of a
canalization worked by the organs of our senses in the interest of
our action, but that there should yet be around those perceptions a
fringe of vague perceptions, capable of becoming more distinct in
extraordinary, abnormal cases. Those would be precisely the cases
with which psychical research would deal.
This conception of mental action forms, as will be seen, the foundation
of the theory of dreams which Professor Bergson first presented in a
lecture before the _Institut psychologique_, March 26, 1901. It was
published in the _Revue scientifique_ of June 8, 1901. An English
translation, revised by the author and printed in _The Independent_ of
October 23 and 30, 1913, here appears for the first time in book form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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