THE CONCEPTUAL WORLD 7 



inhibited whenever what we call intellectual activity 

 proceeds. 



Much of the stimulation of our receptor organs is of 

 this generally occurring nature, and we are not aware 

 of it although the stimuli received are such as to induce 

 useful and purposeful bodily activity. In walking 

 along the street we automatically avoid the people, 

 and the other obstacles that we encounter, by means 

 of regulated movements of the body and limbs, but 

 this is activity that has become so habitual and easy 

 that we are hardly aware of it, and not at all, perhaps, 

 of the physical stimuli which induce it. But not only 

 do we receive stimuli which are reflected into bodily 

 actions without our being keenly aware of this reception, 

 but we also receive stimuli which do not become re- 

 flected into bodily activity. It is, Bergson suggests, 

 as if we were to look out into the street through a 

 sheet of glass held perpendicularly to our line of sight ; 

 held in this way we see perfectly all that happens in 

 front of us, but when we incline the glass at a certain 

 angle it becomes a perfect reflector and throws back 

 again the rays of light that it receives. This is, of 

 course, a physical analogy, and no comparison of 

 material things with psychical processes can go very 

 far, but in a way it is more than an analogy. In our 

 indolent absorbed state of mind we do not as a rule 

 see the objects which we are not compelled to avoid, 

 and which do not, in any way, influence our immediate 

 condition of bodily activity. The optical images of 

 all these things are thrown upon our retinas and are, 

 in some way, thrown or projected upon the central 

 ganglia, but there the series of events comes to an end, 

 for the images are not reflected out towards the 

 periphery of the body as muscular actions. We 

 cannot doubt that this is why we do not perceive all 



