![]() The brain inserts memories into the present, with a view to action. ![]() ![]() The first edition explained his approach thus: ‘The brain merely guides memory towards actions in the present. He considered memory to be deeply spiritual. Bergson rejected this reduction of mind to matter. He sought to refute the proposition, then very current, that memory, being ‘lodged’ in the nervous system, localised in the brain, was therefore material. For in Matter and Memory, Bergson set out to consider the classic problem of the union of ‘soul and body’ by the analysis of memory. The first edition carried the subtitle An Essay on the Relationship of Body to Spirit and although this was dropped by the author when revising the text in later editions, it remains a useful introductory statement. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century. ![]() ![]() It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. Matter and Memory, ( Matière et Mémoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. ![]()
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