---
slug: paper-bergson-h-1896-matter-and-memory-mati-re-et-m-moire
title: Bergson, H. (1896). Matter and Memory
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-bergson-h-1896-matter-and-memory-mati-re-et-m-moire
---

## What Bergson Saw and Core Results

Henri Bergson examined the relation between body and mind through the example of memory. He treated matter as images that exist independently. Perception selects from these images according to possible action. Memory inserts the past into the present. The body acts as a center of indetermination. It filters images for utility. Pure perception would be instantaneous and objective. Actual perception always includes memory and therefore duration.

Bergson distinguished two forms of memory. Habit memory repeats actions through the body. Pure memory preserves the past as virtual images independent of the brain. The brain prolongs or inhibits but does not store recollections. Duration names the continuous survival of the past in the present. Matter repeats itself without memory. Living systems introduce novelty through contraction of duration.

The core result is a dualism of matter and spirit. Matter occupies homogeneous space and repeats. Spirit occupies heterogeneous duration and remembers. Perception arises where the two meet. Memory measures the power of action upon things.

## Exact Primary Passages

The 1911 English translation by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer gives the following passages.

"Memory is then in no degree an emanation of matter; on the contrary, matter, as grasped in concrete perception which always occupies a certain duration, is in great part the work of memory." (Chapter 4)

"If matter does not remember the past, it is because it repeats the past unceasingly, because, subject to necessity, it unfolds a series of moments of which each is the equivalent of the preceding moment and may be deduced from it." (Chapter 4)

"Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older." (Preface to Time and Free Will, cross-referenced in Matter and Memory discussions)

"There is no perception which is not full of memories." (Chapter 1, standard citation MM 33)

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory." (Chapter 3)

These passages appear in the Zone Books edition and the Dover reprint of the 1911 translation.

## Convergence Patterns with the Synthesis

The work touches the pattern of memory arising from difference and flow. Thermodynamic repetition in matter contrasts with duration that contracts multiple moments. This contraction produces structure that persists. The ladder from difference to flow to structure to memory to mind receives support here. Energy flows in matter remain necessary but insufficient for mind. Memory supplies the additional layer that allows novelty.

The cone diagram in Chapter 3 illustrates the past as a virtual base and the present as the moving apex. This image evidences scale invariance across durations. Bounded chaos appears in the selective action of the body. The reader stands inside the system because perception is always already memory-laden. The Mirror Layer finds an early statement in the claim that concrete perception is the work of memory.

The synthesis receives indirect support on the route from energy flows to mind. No direct treatment of branching or spirals occurs. The emphasis stays on time rather than spatial patterns.

## Distance from the Full Synthesis

Bergson stops at the intersection of mind and matter. He does not extend the account to life as an intermediate rung or to cosmic energy flows that produce patterns across scales. The ladder receives only its upper segments. GRAIN patterns such as symmetry or flow networks receive no explicit mapping. The work supplies a mechanism for memory but offers no ledger or receipt formalism. OIP invocation routes remain outside its scope.

## Honest Limits and Disconfirming Edges

The argument rests on introspective analysis and selected neurological cases of the period. No controlled experiments appear. Tier mapping places the duration claim at anecdotal for textual attribution and speculative for its metaphysical extension to spirit. Reductionist objections in the style of later physicalism note that brain states correlate tightly with recall without requiring independent pure memory. Disconfirming edges include the absence of falsifiable predictions about memory storage and the retention of classical dualism against monist alternatives. The 1896 framework predates modern thermodynamics of open systems and information theory. Later physics supplies quantitative accounts of dissipation and self-organization that Bergson did not address.

Sibling articles carry related load at /a/oip-the-ladder and /a/oip-the-mirror-layer.
