Bergson's "Matter and Memory," a Ladder between Perception and Sensation: The Range of Late 19th Century Thought

Bergson's "Matter and Memory," a Ladder between Perception and Sensation: The Range of Late 19th Century Thought
Before entering into the essence of memory, Bergson starts by carefully distinguishing and arranging the relationship between the two domains of perception and sensation, which are both external and internal to the body. Perception is an image that belongs to the world side and has a spatial extent, while sensation is a phenomenon of intensity that appears as a response inside the body and has no extent. Bergson emphasizes the need to strictly organize the two, since confusing the two leads back to the circular theory that treats memory as an image stored in the brain and makes the relationship between consciousness and the world unclear. However, the parallel existence of perception and sensation alone does not constitute experience. How outer perception and inner sensation connect and take on meaning involves a broad experiential process called education or training. Whether a sight is perceived as dangerous or nostalgic depends on the overlap between the body's senses and
past experiences, and this correspondence is the function of memory. Memory is not a projection device in the brain, but a history of the relationship between perception and sensation. As a preliminary step to his theory of memory, Bergson carefully drew the structure of the ladder between the imagery of the external world and the internal reactions of the body, and then prepared to build a theory of memory on it.