The Mind and the Brain / Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps

by Alfred Binet

It is, therefore, easy to understand, that it should have been proposed to carry into ideation the dichotomy between the physical and the moral. Many excellent authors have made the domain of the mind begin in the ideal. Matter is that which does not think. Descartes, in his Discours de la Méthode (4th part), remarking that he may pretend "not to have a body, and that there is no world or place in which he exists, but that he cannot pretend that he does not think," concludes by saying that the mind is "a substance, all whose essence or nature is merely to think, and which has no need of either place or any other material thing, in order to exist;" in short, that "the soul is absolutely distinct from the body."[19]

Let us, then, examine in what measure this separation between perception and ideation can be legitimately established. If we accept this separation, we must abandon the distinction I proposed between acts and objects of cognition, or, at least, admit that this distinction does not correspond to that between the physical and the moral, since thoughts, images, recollections, and even the most abstract conceptions, all constitute, in a certain sense, objects of cognition. They are phenomena which, when analysed, are clearly composed of two parts, an object and a cognition. Their logical composition is, indeed, that of an external perception, and there is in ideation exactly the same duality as in sensation. Consequently, if we maintain the above distinction as a principle of classification for all knowable phenomena, we shall be obliged to assign the same position to ideas as to sensations.

The principal difference we notice between sensation and idea is, it would seem, the character of unreality in the last named; but this opposition has not the significance we imagine. Our mental vision only assumes this wholly special character of unreality under conditions in which it is unable to harmonise with the real vision. Taine has well described the phases of the reduction of the image by sensation: it is at the moment when it receives the shock of an image which contradicts it, that the image appears as illusory.[20] Let us suppose that we are sitting down dreaming and watching the passing by of our images. If, at this moment, a sudden noise calls us back to reality, the whole of our mental phantasmagoria disappears as if by the wave of a magic wand, and it is by thus vanishing that the image shows its falsity. It is false because it does not accord with the present reality.

But, when we do not notice a disagreement between these two modes of cognition, both alike give us the impression of reality. If I evoke a reminiscence and dwell attentively on the details, I have the impression that I am in face of the reality itself. "I feel as if I were there still," is a common saying; and, among the recollections I evoke, there are some which give me the same certitude as the perception of the moment. Certain witnesses would write their depositions with their blood. One does not see this every day; but still one does see it.

Further, there are thousands of circumstances where the ideation is neither in conflict with the perception nor isolated from it, but in logical continuity with it. This continuity must even be considered as the normal condition. We think in the direction of that which we perceive. The image seems to prepare the adaptation of the individual to his surroundings; it creates the foresight, the preparation of the means, and, in a word, everything which constitutes for us a final cause. Now, it is very necessary that the image appear real to be usefully the substitute of the sensation past or to come.

Let us establish one thing more. Acting as a substitute, the image not only appears as real as the sensation, it appears to be of the same nature; and the proof is that they are confounded one with the other, and that those who are not warned of the fact take one for the other. Every time a body is perceived, as I previously explained, there are images which affix themselves to the sensation unnoticed. We think we perceive when we are really remembering or imagining. This addition of the image to the sensation is not a petty and insignificant accessory; it forms the major part, perhaps nine-tenths, of perception. Hence arise the illusions of the senses, which are the result, not of sensations but of ideas. From this also comes the difficulty of knowing exactly what, under certain circumstances, is observation or perception, where the fact perceived ends, and where conjecture begins. Once acquainted with all these possibilities of errors, how can we suppose a radical separation between the sensation and the image?

Examined more closely, images appear to us to be divisible into as many kinds as sensations: visual images correspond to visual sensations, tactile to tactile, and so on with all the senses.

That which we experience in the form of sensation, we can experience over again in the form of image, and the repetition, generally weaker in intensity and poorer in details, may, under certain favourable circumstances, acquire an exceptional intensity, and even equal reality: as is shown by hallucinations. Here, certainly, are very sound reasons for acknowledging that the images which are at the bottom of our thoughts, and form the object of them, are the repetition, the modification, the transposition, the analysis or the synthesis of sensations experienced in the past, and possessing, in consequence, all the characteristics of bodily states. I believe that there is neither more nor less spirituality in the idea than in the sensation. That which forms its spirituality is the implied act of cognition; but its object is material.

I foresee a final objection: I shall be told that even when the unreality of the image is not the rule, and appears only under certain circumstances, it nevertheless exists. This is an important fact. It has been argued from the unreality of dreams and hallucinations in which we give a body to our ideas, that we do not in reality perceive external bodies, but simply psychical states and modifications of our souls. If our ideas consist—according to the hypothesis I uphold—in physical impressions which are felt, we shall be told that these particular impressions must participate in the nature of everything physical; that they are real, and always real; that they cannot be unreal, fictitious, and mendacious, and that, consequently, the fictitious character of ideation becomes inexplicable.