164 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



the cerebral states, because the things which happen would conform to 

 this view; but the same does not hold true of memory, for a memory is a 

 representation of an absent object. 



Does a memory arise from a weakened repetition of a cerebral 

 phenomenon ? Is it a weakened perception ? Is there only a differ- 

 ence of intensity between a perception and a recollection ? 



Now if, as our hypothesis supposes, the brain itself in no way begets 

 the image of a present object, but only continues it into action, it (the 

 brain) may also prolong and turn into action the memory which we 

 summon up: but it cannot give birth to that recollection. 



And again, if perception is something of the present object itself, 

 memory being related to absent objects must be of an opposite nature. 

 There are no intermediate stages (as of weaker and stronger) between 

 presence and absence. 



The Brain Only a Contact between Mind and World 



So much for the hypothesis; now how do the facts stand? The 

 facts bearing on any hypothesis of accumulated memories in cortical 

 substance are drawn from localized disorders of memory. If recollec- 

 tions were deposited in the brain, gaps of memory should somehow 

 correspond to lesions of the brain. But a whole period of the past 

 may be obliterated without any precise cerebral lesion; and, on the 

 contrary, in those disorders of memory where cerebral localization is 

 distinct and certain, that is to say, in the different types of aphasia, 

 and in the diseases of visual or auditory recognition, we do not find that 

 definite recollections are, as it were, torn from their seat, but that it is the 

 whole faculty of remembering that is more or less diminished in vitality, 

 as if the subject had more or less difficulty in bringing his recollections 

 into contact with the present situation. 



The mechanism of this contact was therefore what we had to study 

 in order to ascertain whether the office of the brain is not rather to 

 insure the working of the contact than to imprison memory in the cells. 



This contact is recognition. 



Recognition of a present object may be effected in two absolutely 

 different ways, but in neither case does the brain act as a reservoir of 

 images. 



