[396] “There is no intelligence in which some traces of instinct are not to be discovered, more, no instinct that is not surrounded with a fringe of intelligence” (_Creative Evolution_, p. 143). [397] “We will not dwell here upon a point we have dealt with in former works. Let us merely recall that a theory [the theory of contemporary physiological psychology] such as that according to which consciousness is attached to certain neurons, and is thrown off from their work like a phosphorescence, may be accepted by the scientist for the detail of analysis; _it is a convenient mode of expression. But it is nothing else. In reality, a living being is a centre of action._ It represents a certain sum of contingency entering into the world, that is to say, a certain quantity of possible action--a quantity variable with individuals and especially with species. The nervous system of an animal marks out the flexible lines on which its action will run (although the potential energy is accumulated in the muscles rather than in the nervous system itself); its nervous centres indicate, by their development and their configuration, the more or less extended choice it will have among more or less numerous and complicated actions. Now, since the awakening of consciousness in a living creature is the more complete, the greater the latitude of choice allowed to it and the larger the amount of action bestowed upon it, it is clear that the development of consciousness will appear to be dependent on that of the nervous centres. On the other hand, every state of consciousness being, in one aspect of it, a question put to the motor activity and even the beginning of a reply, there is no psychical event that does not imply the entry into play of the cortical mechanisms. Everything seems, therefore, to happen _as if_ consciousness sprang from the brain, and _as if_ the detail of conscious activity were modelled on that of the cerebral activity. In reality consciousness does not spring from the brain, but brain and consciousness correspond because equally they measure ... the quantity of _choice_ that the living being has at its disposal” (_Creative Evolution_, pp. 266–7). [398] “Instead of starting from _affection_ [or ‘sensation’ in the old sense of the haphazard sensation] of which we can say nothing, since there is no reason why it should be what it is rather than anything else, we start from _action_, that is to say, from our power of effecting changes in things, a faculty attested by consciousness, and towards which all the powers of the organised body are seen to converge. So we place ourselves at once in the midst of extended images [to Bergson as an idealist things are at the same time images or ideas for a consciousness in other things, or in us, or in beings other than ourselves], and in this material universe we perceive centres of indetermination characteristic of life” (_Matter and Memory_, p. 67).