There are, in M. Bergson's theory, a few assertions which surprise us a little, like everything which runs counter to old habits. It has always been supposed that our body is the receptacle of our psychological phenomena. We store our reminiscences in our nerve centres; we put the state of our emotions in the perturbations of certain apparatus; we find the physical basis of our efforts of will and of attention in the sensations of muscular tension born in our limbs or trunk. Directly we believe that the nervous system is no longer the depository of these states, we must change their domicile; and where are they to be placed? Here the theory becomes obscure and vague, and custom renders it difficult to understand the situation of the mind outside the body. M. Bergson places memory in planes of consciousness far removed from action, and perception he places in the very object we perceive. If I look at my bookcase, my thought is in my books; if I look at the sky, my thought is in a star.[49] It is very difficult to criticise ideas such as these, because one is never certain that one understands them. I will therefore not linger over them, notwithstanding the mistrust which they inspire in me. But what seems to me to require proof is the function M. Bergson is led to attribute to the sensory nerves. To his mind, it is not exact to say that the excitement of a sensory nerve excites sensation. This would be a wrong description, for, according to him, every nerve, even a sensory one, serves as a motor; it conducts the disturbance which, passing through the central commutator, flows finally into the muscles. But then, whence comes it that I think I feel a sensation when my sensory nerve is touched? Whence comes it that a pressure on the epitrochlear nerve gives me a tingling in the hand? Whence comes it that a blow on the eyeball gives me a fleeting impression of light? One must read the page where M. Bergson struggles against what seems to me the evidence of the facts. "If, for one reason or another," he says, "the excitement no longer passes, it would be strange if the corresponding perception took place, since this perception would then put our body in relation with points of space which would no longer invite it to make a choice. Divide the optic nerve of any animal; the disturbance starting from the luminous point is no longer transmitted to the brain, and thence to the motor nerves. The thread which connected the external object to the motor mechanism of the animal by enveloping the optic nerve, is severed; the visual perception has therefore become powerless, and in this powerlessness consists unconsciousness." This argument is more clever than convincing. It is not convincing, because it consists in exaggerating beyond all reason a very real fact, that of the relation which can be discovered between our sensations and our movements. We believe, with M. Bergson, that it is absolutely correct to see in action the end and the _raison d'etre_