Alfred Binet

“ Though I was led into metaphysics by private needs, though some of the ideas I have set forth above were conceptions of my own (for example, the criticism of the mechanical theory of matter, and the definition of sensation) , before I had read M. Bergson’s book, it cannot be denied that its perusal has so strongly modified my ideas that a great part of these are due to him without my feeling capable of exactly discerning which; for ideas have a much more impersonal character than observations and experiments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be thought that the objection taken above to parallelism and materialism is personal to myself, because I have put it forward as the consequence of my analysis of the respective shares of thought and matter in every act of cognition. ”

“ M. Bergson places it before the movement, and supposes it to play with regard to it the part of exciting cause, or simply that of initiator. This cerebral movement becomes an effect of the representation and a motor effect. Consequently the nervous system passes into the state of motor organ; the sensory nerves are not, as supposed, true sensory nerves, but they are the commencements of motor nerves, the aim of which is to lead the motor excitements to the centres which play the part of commutators and direct the current, sometimes by one set of nerves, sometimes by others. ”