Communicating Europe and to Citizens: Evaluation Report

Bringing Europe closer to its citizens is the aim of Europe’s Communication Strategy. It is not a legal obligation on part of any European Institution to communicate its activities to citizens. Apart from the European Parliament which as the only elected body in the political triangle of Commission-Council-Parliament, the Commission took the first step towards a Communication Strategy vis a vi the public in 2005 after the negative votes in France and the Netherlands on the European Constitution. The Treaty of Maastricht aimed for more than just a single European market and created the need to “fill the gap” between citizens and european decision makers on what is called Communication.

“Not as a rescue operation for the constitution, but to stimulate a wider debate between the European Union’s democratic institutions and citizens”, a Plan D - Democracy, Dialogue and Debate, under Margot Wallstroem, was initiated to respond to this need and other identified weaknesses of past communication activities. In September 2009 the first evaluation report of Plan D and the closely related “Debate Europe” activities was overall negative. The authors came to the conclusion that “Despite an overall objective of "communicating Europe in partnership", the EC failed to actively seek synergies for Plan D and Debate Europe, either with other DG, or with the European Parliament, or with Member States‟ initiatives” and “The fact that no clear status was given to the results of the projects prevented even the largest events from contributing to the European decision-making process”.

All this has a lot to say about how 6.5 Million Euro is spend on initiatives that yield such results. But more important than the negative evaluation is the fact that the Lisbon Treaty replaced the Maastricht treaty in December 2009. Almost ten years after the negotiations to modify EU institutions began the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is enforced without a significant something filling this gap between citizens and european policies. It is thus imaginable that the gap between public opinion and public policy is not bridged by the principles other than those who dislike the idea that propaganda is always a means to an end.

BACON’S ESSAYS an Introduction

There are certain periods in the world's history which have a special attraction for those who are watching with interest the intellectual and moral development of India. Such a period is the age of Socrates and the Sophists in Greece. Then, as now in India, the belief in an old mythology was being shattered; tradition, authority, and custom, were no longer accepted as adequate sanctions for moral rules and political institutions. In a word, a spirit of rational inquiry and criticism was supervening upon an age of childlike faith. Such a period again is the age of the Reformation and the Revival of Learning. Here, too, we have a revolt of reason against authority. The dangers of such a movement were greater in Greece than in modern Europe. There was no political stability in any Grecian city, and therefore no natural resistance to revolutionary doctrines. There was no organized or powerful system of scientific or moral beliefs to check the free play of crude and wanton speculation. In this respect here is a close analogy between Greece and India. Both countries suffered in the same ways and from the same causes. The Indian mind was bewildered, at the same time that it was attracted, by the novelty of English philosophy and science. Here, as in Greece, the uprooting of old beliefs has begotten a premature and excessive skepticism, and an exaggerated distrust of everything established. The fascination of a new intellectual world has produced a recklessness in speculation and criticism, which time and experience only can correct. Lastly, a gulf has been set between old an young, and there are dangerous disruptions in families and in society. The spirit of the sixteenth century was a more serious one. The Church had established over the world a dominion which was not to be lightly attacked or easily overthrown. On its religious side, the new movement was, in its essence, a revolt in favour of high spiritual principles. On its secular side, it was a free and generous interest in the new world presented by literature, and in the promises of science. India has differed from Europe in this respect, that Europe had by serious struggle and effort to create for herself that great body of knowledge which she has presented as a gift to India. It may be doubted whether this difference represents pure gain to India - "Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too."
With the sixteenth century the modern world begins. The spirit of its religion, its philosophy, and its science is our spirit. Reason was asserting, as against authority that independence which is still our dearest object. Bacon is one of the most interesting figures of that interesting age. He represents its deep patriotism, its patient effort, its wide interests, its high aims, its lofty enthusiasm. His earliest and chief interest in life was the reform of scientific method. When only twelve years and three months old he was sent to Cambridge. His experience there was disappointing to him. Aristotle regained supreme in the schools, and Bacon was struck with "the unfruitfulness of his way". Science had little or nothing to show in the way of results; and nothing, it occurred to him, was to be hoped for, until a new method was invented and applied. To supply this want became henceforth the passion of his life. Writing to Lord Burleigh at the beginning of his thirty-second year, he says, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that province." There was, he complains, no "art of invention." Such discoveries as had been made were the result of accident, not of methodical and rational inquiry. The so-called induction that was practised was nothing but a process of hasty generalization. The human mind had neglected those artificial aids which alone can enable it to cope with the subtlety of nature. Impatience and an undue eagerness to show results had led to premature dogmatizing and hypothesis. Conclusions had been deduced from premises which were mere combinations of inaccurate, ill-defined, inadequate notions of things. Instead of ascertaining the laws of phenomena, science had been content to point out the final causes of things. Above all,

no attempt had been made to compare and co-ordinate the results of the different branches of inquiry.

Besides the mistakes into which men had been led by peculiarities of temperament and education, by language, and by an exaggerated respect for the authority of great names, there are certain fallacies to which the human mind is from its very nature liable. "The mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence: nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." These inherent and universal tendencies to error Bacon calls "idols of the tribe." The times in the world's history in which learning of any kind had flourished had been but few, and even in them

inquiry had been directed rather to ethics, politics, and theology, than to natural science. The progress of science had been further impeded by the jealousy of theologians

and statesmen, as well as by the credulity and frivolity of professed students, and the ignorance and affection of professed teachers.
It seemed, however, to bacon that there were grounds for hopefulness in his day partly because of the unexpected discoveries which science had recently made, partly because of the extension of cosmography. "It may be truly affirmed, to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never through-lights made in it, till the age of us and our fathers." Two things where wanted to secure progress: 1. a right conception of the end and aim of science, and 2. a method which should correct the natural defects of the intellect should put all inquirers on one level, and should be certain in its results. "Men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation ; sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction ; and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch wherupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of men's estate".

Over and over again Bacon insists that knowledge is to be judged by its results.

By its fruit ye shall know it. "The true relation between the nature of things and the nature of the mind is as the strewing and decoration of the bridal chamber of the mind and the universe, the Divine goodness assisting; out of which marriage let us hope (and be this the prayer of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity." Fruit, in fact, is not so much the justification as the test of knowledge. Bacon is not degrading knowledge by representing it as an instrument for promoting the comfort of man. He was quit aware that study is a duty imposed upon us by the possession of our talents, that it is a source of innocent pleasure, that it is the handmaid of religion, and that it is the condition of all moral and spiritual perfection. God is disgraced and man rendered miserable by ignorance and the barbarism which attends it. The removal of superstition, refinement of manners, and improvement of morals are all included in the fruit of knowledge. Bacon was not thinking merely of additions to man's stock of material comforts. But he was deeply impressed with the idea that what nature does we can do, if we can only find out how she does it. And man may, if he will possess himself of the key to the interpretation of nature. "The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the inwardness of all secrets." It was Bacons mission to 1. point out the vast dominion which a perfected science would open up to man, and at the same time 2. to point out the road which man must follow if he would enter into possession of his kingdom. "I most humbly," he says, "and fervently pray to God that, remembering the sorrows of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life, wherein we wear out days few and evil, he will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human family with new mercies." It is ordained that man shall possess nothing but by the sweat of his brow. Power can be gained only through knowledge; and knowledge can be reached only by a patient and methodical study of nature. We must be content to be the servants and interpreters of nature. We must become as little children, if we wish to enter into "the kingdom of man".
Fired with this idea of a perfect science which, besides being a fresh revelation of God's glory, should also be fraught with untold blessings to man, Bacon projected "a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations," namely, "experience of every kind, and the same well examined and weighed." This Great Intauration was to consist of six parts. In the first part he proposed "to exhibit a summary or general description of the knowledge which the human race in his day possessed, taking note at the same time of things omitted which ought to be there." This part of the scheme is represented by the Advancement of Learning. and the expanded translation of it known as the De Augmentis Scientiarum. After this was to come the New Organon, or Bacon's Own scientific method. This method was, in the first place, to be inductive. But it was to differ altogether from that hasty process of generalization from a few casual observations, which generally passed by the name of induction. Experience was to be analyzed. By a process of exclusion and rejection conclusions were to be reached, the truth of which could not be doubted. The mind was to be led gradually and regularly from one axiom to another, at the most general being reached last, so that no loophole might be left by which error could creep in. Lastly, men were to be warned against such tendencies to error as are ineradicable, as well as against those that are accidental: while instruments and experiments were to supply the failures and correct the errors of sense. The experience which this method of interpretation presupposes was to be accumulated in a Natural and Experimental history, which was to form the third part of the Instauration. It was to supply the intellect with fit matter to work upon, as the Logic supplied it with safeguards to guide and control its working. It was to be a complete and exhaustive description of the phenomena of nature as revealed by observation and experiment. Bacon, strangely enough, thought that, if a sufficient number of workers were employed, such a history might in a short time be compiled, and that then nothing would remain to complete the sum of knowledge but to interpret the "stuff and matter" thus supplied according to the rules of his Logic. Bacon's own contributions to this history are to be found in the second volume of Ellis and Spedding's Edition of his works. The Natural and Experimental history was to be followed by the Ladder of the Intellect. As all rules and reasonings are made more intelligible by examples, Bacon proposed in this part of his scheme "to set forth examples of inquiry and invention according to his method, exhibited by anticipation in some particular subjects; choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves, and most different from one another; that there may be an example in every kind."
This was to be followed by Anticipations of the New Philosophy, or conclusions which Bacon himself had arrived at, but which, as not being discovered and proved by his new method, were to be accepted only provisionally. Last of all was to come the New Philosophy or Active Science: -"the apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures," which will be revealed by the proper "Interpretation of Nature." Bacon did not do more than write the prefaces to the fourth and fifth parts. If we wish to understand what practical results he anticipated from that "legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry" which he had propounded, we must read his New Atlantis.
But Bacon's interests were not confined to the advancement of science. There is nothing, he says, in being and action, which should not be drawn into contemplation and doctrine. He was anxious that "pragmatical men may not go away with an opinion that learning is like a lark that can mount, and sing, and please herself, and nothing else: but may know that she holdeth as well of hawk, that can soar aloft, and can also descend and strike upon the prey." No more keen observer of life and affairs than Bacon ever lived. he delighted in writings of moralists, like Seneca, Lucian, and Montaign: of critics of character, like Tacitus, Plutarch, and Suetonius: and of critics of affairs, like Cicero and Machiavelli. His curiosity had been whetted and his mind enlarged by travel. In the Essays he presents himsolf as the moralist, the statesman, and the man of the world. He calls them "certain brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously: not vulgar, but of a kind whereof men shall find much in experience and little in books." As we read them, we naturally compare Bacon to one of those old Romans whom he himself describes as walking at certain hours in the Forum, and giving audience to those that would use their advice. They are specimens of that wisdom which arises out of an universal insight into the affairs of the world. They come home, he says, to men's business and bosoms. He describes them truly as being not set treatises, but "dispersed meditations." It was a favourite idea with him that such was the best form of writing in matters relating to conduct. The Essays are the fruits of his observation of life. They reflect his experience of men and the world. The most curious are those which treat of cunning, of suitors, of wisdom for a man's self, of simulation and dissimulation, and other subjects of the kind. They reveal a habit of thought and action which is naturally generated under despotic rule. When all depends on the favour of one man, men will intrigue to gain his favour. There is probably nothing in the whole range of literature which would be more appreciated in an Indian darbar than these Essays of Bacon and the Prince of Machiavelli. Bacon often checks himself, as if half ashamed of the practices which he is criticizing, if not recommending. He knew quiet well the moral dangers that beset a public man. But he had laid himself out to get on in the world, and success then was hard to attain without servility, adulation, and complacency. The very advantages which he possessed of tact and address were an additional danger to him. Left a poor man by his father's death, he found himself forced at the beginning of his career to become a suitor to those in power. At first he wanted a place chiefly with a view to securing leisure and means for carrying out his scientific work. During the reign of Elizabeth all his applications for office were unsuccessful. Hope deferred made his heart grow sick. Time was passing, and with it the chances of accomplishing that reform of learning, which was the dominant interest of his life. He was conscious too of great abilities, which might be turned to the advantage of the state. In the House of Commons he found his talents recognised, and his judgment respected. The traditions of his family made him look naturally to a public career. Life and its problems, the world and its honours, the court and its pageantry had a real attraction for him. Yet he remained outside the charmed circle of office. The queen probably thought it unnecessary to reward him with a permanent place, seeing that he was always ready and able to perform such occasional services as were required of him. He was a man of wisdom and discretion beyond his years, an eloquent and thougthful speaker

"He was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, when he could spare, or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more prestly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded, where he spoke; and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was, lest he should make an end." Ben Jonson

a keen observer, but above all a pliant instrument. Just as in after times he could sound the very depths of subservience when he thought he had offended Villiers, so under Elizabeth he was willing to appear as the prosecutor of his friend Essex, because hesitation or refusal would have prejudiced his own interests. Promotion came to him under Elizabeth's successor. The history of his advancement may be told in his own words. Writing to the king, he says, "You found me of the Learned Counsel, Extraordinary, without patent or fee; a kind of individuum vagum. You established me, and brought me into ordinary. Soon after you placed me Solicitor, where I served seven years. Then your Majesty made me your Attorney or Procurator General. Then a Privy Councillor, while I was Attorny; a kind of miracle of your favour, that had not been in many ages. Then Keeper of your Seal: and because that was a kind of planet and not fixed, Chancellor. And when your Majesty could raise me no higher, it was your grace to illustrate me with beams of honour; first making me Baron Verulam, and now viscount St. Albans." The key to his life is to be found in his favorite quotation, "My soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage." Destined by inclination and capacity to be a student, he found himself engrossed with the cares and occupations of public life. Animated by a high ideal of government and law, he had to stoop to be the instrument of the petty police, the mean conceptions, and the narrow jealousies of James. Profoundly religious at heart, and filled with high principles of morality, he had yet to adapt himself to the conditions of a selfish and intriguing world, and to study and practice the arts by which material success in life was to be won. To James he was invaluable servant. But the very conditions of service were full of danger to one who combined so much ability with so much suppleness. We need not wonder at the cynical contempt which he sometimes expresses for human nature. He found favorites to be conciliated, and rivals to be outwitted. Ready obedience was more valued than honest independence. Courtly deference was necessary to obtain commendation for conscientious and useful work.
It was Bacon's practice through life to record his opinions on the current questions of the day; and even when the king failed to appreciate his higher aims and statesmanship, yet he could always understand and profit by his knowledge of men, and his keen insight into the requirements of expediency. Bacon said truly of himself that he was never the author of immoderate or unsuccessful counsels, and that he had always desire to have things carried in pleasant ways. He was just the man to smooth away by the practical wisdom of compromise the differences which could not but arise between an arbitrary king like James and his subjects. He was a strong defender of the king's prerogative.

He regarded monarchy as the earliest and most natural form of government, as being only an extension of the original patriarchal authority. But he wished it to be limited as in England, not despotic as in Turkey.

He saw the economic and social dangers of having too large an idle class. At the same time he thought an order of nobles useful, partly as an ornament and protection to the monarch, partly as a security to the people against oppression. He saw to the full the importance of trade and recommended the regulation of it by law in ways of which we should not approve. With regard to the masses of the people, he says that they must above all things be warlike. War is to the state what exercise is to the body. Pretexts for a declaration of war should never be wanting, when the interests of the state demand war. Our views on this subject are different. The difference is due partly to an improved morality, but partly also to our having learnt, what Bacon did not know, that the industrial prosperity of one country requires peace and prosperity in other nations. Bacon thought of war partly as being useful in diverting popular attention from internal grievances. The position of England, too, among the Protestant powers in his day suggested, if it did not actually demand, a military policy. True to his principle of turning observation and reflection to account for the benefit of man, Bacon was constantly revolving projects of practical reform. He was specially interested in the codification of law and the simplification of procedure. He was the determined foe of empiricism in politics. "It is almost without instance contradictory," he says, "that ever any government was disastrous that was in the hands of learned governors." One of his reasons for supporting the English form of government was that it represented government by intelligence. He was a strong advocate of Parliaments; but in all matters of importance he thought that the king and not the Parliament should take the initiative. He objected altogether to the position into which James was drifting with regard to Parliament. It seemed to him politically dangerous and altogether beneath the dignity of the Crown, that the king should become a mere suitor to Parliament, dependent for his supplies upon the concessions which the Commons could wrest from him. It seemed to him that the king should meet the Commons with proposals for legislation, and that they should inform and assist him with advice as to the wishes, the interests, and the grievances of the people. Common dangers and common patriotism had grappled Elizabeth to the souls of her people with hoops of steel. In Hooker's account of government we find no suggestion of that divergence of interest between Sovereign and people which was implied in subsequent theories of contract, and which was persistently showing itself in the dealings of James with his Parliaments. Bacons studies in Greek and Italian history had familiarized him with the conception of social order as the result of a delicate balance of power, which might at any time be disturbed. We find him constantly endeavoring to keep irritating questions of principle in the background, and to effect a compromise between parties on the particular difficulties that might arise. He talks of setting one powerful noble against another, of balancing the gentry by the higher nobility and the higher nobility by the people. His historical studies will also account for his exaggerated ideas of the political results which can be produced by the intelligence and influence of individuals.
The conciliatory nature of Bacon's policy is nowhere more manifest than in his utterances with regard to religion. He had himself been educated in a strict and narrow school of theology. The policy which he advocated, however, was a policy of toleration. His Essay on Superstition reflects the natural fear of Catholicism felt by men at a time when the life of the Sovereign was in danger from Catholic plots. The relation of the State to the Church was a question which could not then be overlooked. All matters affecting Church Government, Bacon says, have two considerations, 1."the one in themselves, 2. the other how they stand compatible and agreeable to the civil state." he tried his utmost to still the rage of doctrinal controversy within the Church itself. He hated controversy of every kind. In religious matters especially he deprecated it. It seemed to him both fruitless and wicked. Theological controversies, he says, have generally turned upon subjects which the human intellect can never comprehend, or have resulted from attempts to raise human inferences to the dignity of revealed dogmas. He draws a clear distinction between theology or revealed religion, and natural religion, which he defines as "that knowledge or rudiment of knowledge concerning God which may be obtained by the contemplation of His creatures." The greatness, the power, and the wisdom of God are revealed in the book of His works. But of His nature and will we can know so much only as He has chosen to reveal in the book of His word. The contents of the latter are to accepted on faith. We are to believe absolutely what Scriptures says; and the greater the difficulty, the greater the merit of belief. Reason must be content with the task of understanding and interpreting, so far as she can, the text of the Bible. There is much in it that will always appear puzzling and even contradictory, but we must be content to accept the fact. God has willed that our knowledge of Him should, in this life at least, be imperfect. Our duty is to accept reverently what He has chosen to tell us of Himself. But we are not to pry into that which He has hidden. All must accept what God has positively said; but no man may compel another to accept his own individual interpretations and inferences.
Such a divorce of faith from reason is, of course, quite impossible. At the same time Bacon's position is intelligible enough. His own acceptance of the Christian creed was little more than nominal. The Reformation was, in the first instance, a return to the text of Scripture, as distinguished from arbitrary interpretations of that text. There was no thought of questioning the claim of the Bible to be accepted as a Revelation. Bacon accepted the creed of Christianity as we accept so many of the commonplaces of the society in which we live. But it was no vital part of his spiritual self, in the sense in which his scientific convictions and interests were. As a statesman, he wished to obtain acceptance for a practical principle of compromise, which should unite all Englishmen upon essential matters of belief. He was anxious, too, in the interests of science, to persuade theologians that their jealousy of science was unreasonable. Hence he argued that theology and science cannot possibly come into competition. If theologians deprecated a criticism of the Book of God's Word, on what principle could they claim the right to doubt the Book of His Works? Nature is, like the Bible, a book written by God for our instruction. But the two books have different objects, and are to be studied by different methods. The object of the Bible is not to teach science. Any attempts, therefore, to elicit the truths of nature from the Bible must result in false science; and any attempt to limit the inquiries of science in the interest of religion is essentially irrational. Conversely, any attempt to find in nature what can only be found in the Scriptures must end in heresy. The object, the method, and the evidence of science and theology are entirely distinct. But though Bacon was thus indifferent with regard to dogma, yet it is impossible to read his writings without seeing how sincere his religion was, and how profoundly he was influenced by it. He believed nothing for which warrant is not to be found in Scripture; at the same time we are not surprised to find that he supports his beliefs by the evidence of observation and reflection. There is a double advantage in this procedure. It not only gives certainty and precision to the beliefs themselves, but it also affords proof of the divine origin of Christianity. Every fresh analogy between Scripture and the work of God's hands was to him a fresh proof that Scripture, too, comes from God. A careful and thorough study of nature, Bacon says, proves the existence of a God who created, and who continues to regulate the physical universe. The moral world is equally the object of His judgments, chastisements, deliverances, and blessings," which history forces upon our observation. Lastly, in the life of each individual man we may trace "His fatherly compassion, His comfortable chastisements, His visible Providence." Thus Bacon found in religion both a stimulus and consolation. So far as he was true to himself, he worked constantly with the sense of divine guidance and support. He worked in the spirit of an apostle commissioned to reveal to man the glory and the mercies of God. For mercy is the distinguishing characteristic of God. "In the first platform of the divine nature itself the heathen religion speaketh thus, Best and Greatest; and the sacred Scriptures thus, His mercy is over all His works." Nature and revelation alike teach us that the first duty of man is "to aspire to a similitude of God in goodness or love." Practical morality, indeed, may be summed up in the one rule of charity. For charity is "excellently called the bond of perfection, because it comprehendeth and fasteneth all virtues together." Its insistence upon the virtue of charity, and its correspondence in this respect with the teachings of nature are among the proofs of the divine origin of Christianity. The moral teaching of Christianity in this respect naturally exercised a profound influence on a man of Bacon's character and aims. he had by nature an even temper and a kindly and humane disposition. "The state and bread of the poor and oppressed," he says, "have been precious in mine eyes; I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart: I have (though in a despised week) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity and maliciousness." To this we must add his strong conviction that human misery might be indefinitely relieved by scientific discovery. We need not wonder that he was attracted by a religion which exalted a life of active charity. By its condemnation of a life of selfish isolation; Christianity gave the death-blow to the doctrines of half the schools. "Men must know that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angles to be lookers on." Bacon was no philosopher. Indeed, the questions of philosophy, if they had presented themselves to his mind, would probably have been dismissed by him as "barren." We need not therefore to look at any systematic treatment of the problem of conduct in his writings. He would have said, and truly, that

moral failure springs more often from the want of will to do what is right, than from ignorance of what right is.

There are some principles of conduct which are self-evident, and which constitute what he calls "the laws of nature." Further, we have the positive commands of Scripture. The faculty of reason, too, has been given to us to enable us to develop and apply these. Lastly, there survive in man, as relics of the purity of his first estate, certain imperfect intuitions, insufficient indeed to inform him fully of his duty, but at the same time sufficient to tell him that certain actions are wrong. When dealing with the subject of conduct, Bacon lays the chief stress upon the necessity of a good moral training, or, as he calls it, "the Georgics of the mind." The science of conduct, like all other sciences, must be "fruitful"; and, like all other sciences, it must be founded upon experience. Moral diseases must be studied as diseases of the body are. We require, first, an enumeration of the normal types of character. Special attention should be paid to such differences as involve a large number of subordinate differences. In the next place, just as the physician ascertains by anatomy the possible modifications of the normal bodily structure, so we must ascertain the varieties of disposition and temperament due to the accidents of sex, climate, and circumstances. Lastly, as the physician studies diseases and their cures, so we require a complete analysis of the passions, which are, as it were, the diseases of the mind, and a consideration of the influences of habit, praise, reproof, reading, and all the other cures for moral diseases. This is the course which must be adopted, unless we mean "to follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the same medicine to all patients." There is a close analogy between the methods and the objects of moral discipline and of medicine. "For as we divided the good of the body into health, beauty, strength, and pleasure, so the good of the mind, inquired in rational and moral knowledges, tendeth to this, to make the mind sound and without perturbation; beautiful and graced with decency; and strong and agile for all duties of life."
Bacon's writings have always been widely read and admired. There is a stamp of greatness upon them. We are not to look to him for any particular discoveries. His acquaintance even with the results of scientific inquiry in his own time was imperfect. In some cases he rejected the truth, and clung to old fashioned but erroneous beliefs.

The method which he invented is not the method by which science has achieved her conquests. Indeed, it is from the nature of things impossible that the Logician should anticipate the method of science.

He can only formulate it by a study of results. The influence exercised by Bacon has been such as we should expect from a thinker surveying the whole field of knowledge. Inquirers were naturally gratified by the dignity which he gave to their labours, and encouraged by the prospects which held out. He gave to science a human interest. He gave it high hopes and a definite aim. For ourselves his writings have a great historical interest. The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum help to bridge the gulf which separates us from the era of Scholasticism. And, speaking generally, the world profits by an occasional survey and criticism of its intellectual achievements and efforts. Part of Bacon's influence is of course due to the charm of his style. His sentences are often loosely constructed but they are generally clear and intelligible. He is always interesting, because his own interest in his subject never flags. Enthusiasm stimulates his eloquence. His luxuriant imagination enlivens every page. He is perhaps unrivaled in the combination of picturesqueness with wight. This is well illustrated in the Essays. We are alternately charmed by the play of fancy, and arrested by a sentence into which the experience of a lifetime is compressed. No language is too homely, no example too simple, which will serve to drive home a truth. The maxims of bacon have become the commonplaces of science. Yet his expression of them can never lose its charm and force. To the mass of men their positive value is as great as it ever was. Scientific hypotheses are now taken up, discussed, and adopted, without any adequate comprehension of them, or any appreciation of the evidence for and against them. In the sphere of political and social discussion especially, there is need of that patient and conscientious study and reflection advocated by Socrates in the old world, and by Bacon in the new. The history of Bacon's fall will always serve to point a moral; yet it is true that he is one of our great masters in the art of life. He has shown men how full of interest life and the world are to every healthy mind. He has directed them to high aims and worthy interests as the true source of real and abiding satisfaction, and has encouraged them by the assurance that wisdom is justified by her children.

Matter and Memory - Henry Bergson part3

IV.

But this theory of "pure perception" had to be both qualified and completed in regard to two points. For the so-called "pure" perception, which is like a fragment of reality, detached just as it is, would belong to a being unable to mingle with the perception of other bodies that of its own body, that is to say, its affections; nor would it be able to mingle with its intuition of the actual moment that of other moments, that is to say, its memory. In other words, we have, to begin with, and for the convenience of study, treated the living body as a mathematical point in space and conscious perception as a mathematical instant in time. We then had to restore to the body its extensity and to perception its duration. By this we restored to consciousness its two subjective elements, affectivity and memory.
What is an affection? Our perception, we said, indicates the possible action of our body on others. But our body, being extended, is capable of acting upon itself as well as upon other bodies. Into our perception, then, something of our body must enter. When we are dealing with external bodies, these are, by hypothesis, separated from ours by a space, greater or lesser, which measures the remoteness in time of their promise or of their menace: this is why our perception of these bodies indicates only possible actions. But the more the distance diminishes between these bodies and our own, the more the possible action tneds to transform itself into a real action, the call for action becoming more urgent in the measure and proportion that the distance diminishes. And when this distance is nil, that is to say, when the body to be perceived is our own body, it is a real and no longer a virtual action that our perception sketches out. Such is, precisely, the nature of pain, an actual effort of the damaged part to set things to rights, an effort that is local, isolated, and thereby condemned to failure, in an organism which can no longer act except as a whole. Pain is, therefore, in the place where it is felt, as the object is at the place where it is perceived. Between the affection felt and the image percieved there is this difference, that the affection is within our body, the image outside our body. And that is why the surface of our body, the common limit of this and of other bodies, is given to us in the form both of sensations and of an image.
In this interiority of affective sensation consists its subjectivity; in that exteriority of images in general, their objectivity. But here again we encounter the ever-recurring mistake with which we have been confronted througout this work. It is supposed that perception and sensation exist for their own sake; the philosopher ascribes to them an entirely speculative function; and, as he has overlooked those real and virtual actions with which sensation and perception are bound up and by which, according as the action is virtual or real, perception and sensation are characterized and distinguished, he becomes unable to find any other difference between them than a difference of degree. Then, profiting by the fact that affective sensation is but vaguely localizde (because of the effort it involves in an indistinct effort) at once he declares it to be unextended, and these attenuated affections or unextended sensations he sets up as the material with which we are supposed to build up images in space. Thereby he condemns himself to an impossibility of explaining either whence arise the elements of consciousness, or sensations, which he sets up as so many absolutes, or how, unextended, they find their way to space and are coordinated there, or why, in it, they adopt a particular order rather than any other, or finally, how they manage to make up an experience which is regular and common to all men. This experience, the necessary field of our activity, is, on the contrary, what we should start from. Pure perceptions, therfore, or images, are what we should posit at the outset. And sensations, far from being the materials from which the image is wrought, will then appear as the impurity which is introduced into it, being that part of our own body which we project inot all others.

V.

But, as long as we confine ourselves to sensation and to pure perception, we can hardly be said to be dealing with the spirit. No doubt we demonstrate, in opposition to the theory of an epiphenomenal consciousness, that no cerebral state is the equivalent of a perception. No doubt the choice of perceptions from among images in general is the effect of a discernment which foreshadows spirit. No doubt also the material universe itself, defined as the totality of images, is a kind of consciousness, a consciousness in which everything compensates and neutralizes everything else, a consciousness of which all the potential parts, balancing each other by a reaction which is always equal to the action, reciptocally hinder each other from standing out. But to touch the reality of spirit we must place ourselves at the point where an individual consciousness, continuing and retaining the past in a present enriched by it, thus escapes the law of necessity, the law which ordains that the past shall ever follow itself in a present which merely repeats it in another form and that all things shall ever be flowing away. When we pass from pure perception to memory, we definitely abandon matter for spirit.

Matter and Memory - Summery and Conclusion part2

Here we seem to return to realism. But realism, unless corrected on an essential point, is as unacceptable as idealism and for the same reason. Idealism, we said, cannot pass from the order manifested in perception to the order which is successful in science, that is to say, to reality. Inversely, realism fails to draw from reality the immediate consciousness which we have of it. Taking the point of view of ordinary realism, we have, on the one hand, a composite matter made up of more or less independent parts, diffused throughout space, and, on the other hand, a mind which can have no point of contact with matter, unless it be, as materialists maintain, the unintelligible epiphenomenon. If we prefer the standpoint of the Kantian realism, we find between the "thing-in itself," that is to say, the real, and the "sensuous manifold" from which we construct our knowledge, no conceivable relation, no common measure. Now, if we get to the bottom of these two extreme forms of realism, we see that they converge toward the same point: both raise homogeneous space as a barrier between the intellect and things. The simpler realism makes of this space a real medium, in which things are in suspension; Kantian realism regards it as an ideal medium, in which the multiplicity of sensations is coordinated; but for both of them this medium is given to begin with as the necessary condition of what comes to abide in it. And if we try to get to the bottom of this common hypothesis, in its turn, we find that it consists in attributing to homogeneous space a disinterested office: space is supposed either merely to uphold material reality or to have the function, still purely speculative, of furnishing sensations with means of coordinating themselves. So the obscurity of realism, like that of idealism, comes from the fact that, in both of them, our conscious perception and the conditions of our conscious perception are assumed to point to pure knowledge, not to action. But now suppose that this homogeneous space is not logically anterior, but posterior to material things and to the pure knowledge which we can have of them; suppose that extensity is prior to space; suppose that homogeneous space concerns our action and only our action; being like an infinitely fine network which we stretch beneath material continuity in order to render ourselves master of it, to decompose it according to the plan of our activities and our needs. Then, not only has our hypothesis the advantage to bringing us into harmony with science, which shows us each thing exercising an influence on all the others and, consequently, occupying, in a certain sense, the whole of the extended (although we perceive of this thing only its center and mark its limits at the point where our body ceases to have any hold upon it). Not only has it the advantage, in metaphysic, of suppressing or lessening the contradictions raised by divisibility in space - contradictions which always arise, as we have shown, from our failure to dissociate the two points of view, that of action from that of knowledge. It has, above all the advantage of overthrowing the insurmountable barriers raised by realism between the extended world and our perception of it. For whereas this doctrine assumes, on the one hand, an external reality which is multiple and divided, and, on the other hand, sensations alien from extensity and without possible contact with it, we find that concrete extensity is not really divided, any more than immediate perception is in truth unextended. Starting from realism, we come back to the point to which idealism had led us; we replace perception in things. And we see realism and idealism ready to come to an understanding when we set aside the postulate, uncritically accepted by both, which served them as a common frontier.

To sum up: if we suppose an extended continuum, and, in this continuum, the center of real action which is represented by our body, its activity will appear to illuminate all those parts of matter with which at each successive moment it can deal. The same needs, the same power of action, which have delimited our body in matter, will also carve out distinct body in the surrounding medium. Everything will happen as if we allowed to filter through us that action of external things which is real, in order to arrest and retain that which is virtual: this virtual action of things upon our body and of our body upon things is our perception itself. But since the excitations which our body receives from surrounding bodies determine unceasingly, within its substance, nascent reactions - since this internal movements of the cerebral substance thus sketch out at very moments our possible action on things, the state of the brain exactly corresponds to the perception. It is neither its cause, nor its effect, nor in any sense its duplicate: merely continues it, the perception being our virtual action and the cerebral state our action already begun.

Matter and Memory - Summary and Conclusion

I.

The idea that we have disengaged from the facts and confirmed by reasoning is that our body is an instrument of action, and of action only. In no degree, in no sense, under no aspect, does it serve to prepare, far less to explain, a representation. Consider external perception: there is only a difference of degree, not of kind, between the so-called perceptive faculties of the brain and the reflex functions of the spinal cord. While the spinal cord transforms the excitations received into movements which are more or less necessarily executed, the brain puts them into relation with motor mechanisms which are more or less freely chosen;

but that which the brain explains in our perception is action begun, prepared or suggested, it is not perception itself.

Consider memory. The body continues to have motor habits capable of acting the past over again; it can begin to have attitudes in which the past will insert itself; or, again, by the repetition of certain cerebral phenomena, which have prolonged former perceptions, it can furnish the action of remembering a point of attachment with the actual, a means of recovering its lost influence upon present reality: but in no case can the brain store up recollections or images. Thus,

neither in perception, nor in memory, nor a fortiori in the higher attainments of mind, does the body contribute directly to representation.

By developing this hypothesis under its manifold aspects and thus pushing dualism to an extreme, we appeared to divide body and soul by an impassable abyss. In truth, we were indicating the only possible means of bringing them together.

II.

All the difficulties raised by this problem, either in ordinary dualism, or in materialism and idealism, come from considering, in the phenomena of perception and memory, the physical and the mental as duplicates of one another. Suppose I place myself at the materialist point of view of consciousness regarded as a byproduct of brain activity: I am quite unable to understand why certain cerebral phenomena are accompanied by consciousness, that is to say, of what use could the conscious repetition of the material universe I have begun by assuming it to be a fact, or how could it ever arise. Suppose I prefer idealism: I then allow myself only perceptions, and my body is one of them. But whereas observation shows me that the images I perceive are entirely changed by very slight alternatins of the image I call my body (since I have only to shut my eyes and my visual universe diassappears), science assures me that all phenomena must succeed and condition one another according to a determined order, in which effects are strictly proportioned to causes. I am obliged, therefore, to seek, in the image which I call my body, and which follows me everywhere, for changes which shall be the equivalents - but the well-regulated equivalents, now deducible from each other - of the images which succeed one another around my body: the cerebral movements, to which I am led back in this way again are the duplicates of my perceptions. It is true that these movements are still perceptions, "possible" perceptions - so that this second hypothesis is more intelligible than the first; but, on the other hand, it must suppose, in its turn, an inexplicable correspondence between my real perception of things and my possible perception of certain cerebral movements which do not in any way resemble these things. When we look at it closely, we shall see that this is the reef upon which all idealism is wrecked:

there is no possible transition from the order which is perceived by our senses to the order which we are to conceive for the sake of our science, - or, if we are dealing more particularly with the Kantian idealism, no possible transition from sense to understanding.

So my only refuge seems to be ordinary dualism. I place matter on this side, mind on that, and I suppose that cerebral movements are the cause or the occasion of my representation of objects. But if they are its cause, if they are enough to produce it, I must fall back, step-by-step, upon the materialistic hypothesis of a conciousness regarded as a byproduct of brain activity. If they are only its occasion, I thereby suppose that they do not resemble it in any way, and so, depriving matter of all the qualities which I conferred upon it in my representation, I come back to idealism. Idealism and materialism are then the two poles between which this kind of dualism will always oscillate; and when, in order to maintain the duality of substances, it decides to make them both of equal rank, it will be led to regard them as two translations of one and the same original, two parallel and predetermined developments of a single principle, and thus to deny their reciprocal influence, and, by an inevitable consequence, to sacrifice freedom.

Now, if we look beneath these three hypotheses, we find that they have a common basis: all three regard the elementary operations of the mind, perception and memory, as operations of pure knowledge. What they place at the origin of consciousness is either the useless duplicate of an external reality or the inert (lacking) material of an intellectual construction entirely disinterested (impartial): but they always neglect the relation of perception with action and of memory with the manner of its activity. Now, it is no doubt possible to conceive, as an ideal limit, a memory and a perception that are impartial; but, in fact, it is toward action that memory and perception are turned; it is action that the body prepares. Do we consider perception? The growing complexity of the nervous system push and pull the excitation received onto an ever larger variety of motor mechanisms and so sketches simultaneously an ever larger number of possible actions. Do we turn to memory? We note that its primary function is to evoke all those past perceptions which are analogous to the present perception, to recall to us what preceded and followed them, and so to suggest to us that decision which is the most useful. But this is not all. By allowing us to grasp in a single intuition multiple moments of duration, it frees us from movement of the flow of things, that is to say, from the rhythm of necessity. The more of the moments memory can contract into one, the firmer is the hold which it gives to us on matter: so the memory of a living being appears indeed to measure, above all, its powers of action upon things and to be only the intellectual reverberation of this power. Let us start, then, from this energy, as from the true principle: let us suppose that the body is a center of action, and only a center of action. We must see what consequences then result for perception, for memory, and for the relations between body and mind.

III.

To take perception first. here is my body with its "perceptive centers." These centers vibrate, and I have the representation of things. On the other hand, I have supposed that these vibrations can neither produce nor translate my perception. It is, then, outside them. Where is it? I cannot hesitate as to the answer: positing my body, I posit a certain image, but with it also the aggregate of the other images, since there is no material image which does not owe its qualities, its determinations, in short, its existence, to the place which it occupies in the totality of the universe. My perception can, then, only be some part of these objects themselves; it is in them rather than they in it. But what is it exactly within them? I see that my perception appears to follow all the vibratory detail of the so-called sensitive nerves; yet I know that the role of their vibrations is solely to prepare the reaction of my body on neighboring bodies, to sketch out my virtual actions. Perception, therefor, consists in detaching, from the totality of objects, the possible action of my body upon them. Perception appears, then, as only a choice. It creates nothing; its office, on the contrary, is to eliminate from the totality of images all those on which I can hove no hold, and then, from each of those which I retain, all that does not concern the needs of the image which I call my body, at least, much simplified, is the way we explain or describbe schematically what we have called pure perception. Let us mark out at once the intermediate place which we thus take up between realism and idealsm.

That every reality has a kinship, an analogy - in short, a relation with consciousness - this is what we concede to idealism by the very fact that we term things "images." No philosophical doctrine, moreover, provided that it is consistent with itself, can escape from this conclusion. But, if we could assemble all the states of consciousness, past, present and possible, of all conscious beings, we should still only have gathered a very small part of material reality because images outrun perception on every side. It is just these images that science and metaphysic seek to reconstitute, thus restoring the whole of a chain of which our perception grasps only a few links. But, inorder thus to discover between perception and reality the relation of the part to the whole, it is necessary to leave to perception its true office, which is to prepare actions. This is what idealism fails to do. Why is it unable, as we said just now, to pass form the order manifested in perception to the order which is successful in science, that is to say, from the contingency with which our sensations appear to follow each other to the determinism which binds together the phenomena of nature? Precisely because it attributes to consciousness, in perception, a speculative role, so that it is impossible to see what interest this speculative role, so that it is impossible to see what interest this consciousness has in allowing to escape, between two sensations, for instance, the intermediate links through which the second might be deduced from the first. This intermediaries and their strict order thus remain obscure, whether, with Mill, we make the intermediaries into "possible sensations," or, with Kant, hold the substructure of the order to be the work of an impersonal understanding. But suppose that my conscious perception has an entirely practical destination, simply indicating, in the aggregate of things, that which intereests my possible action upon them: I can then understand thatall the rest excapes me, and that, nevertheless, all the rest is o fhte same nature as what I perceive. My consciousness of matter is then no longer either subjective, as it is for English idealism, or relative, as it is for the kantian idealism. It is not subjective, for it is in things rather than in me. It is not relative, because between the "phenomenon" and the "thing" is not that of appearance to reality, but merely that of the part to the whole.

Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson - Introduction

Introduction

This book affirms the realty of spirit and the reality of matter and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held in small honor among philosophers.

These difficulties are due, for the most part, to the conception, now realistic, now idealistic, which philosophers have of matter. The aim of our first chapter is to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that it is a mistake to reduce matter to the perception which we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able to produce in us perceptions, but in itself of another nature than they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of "images." And by "image" we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing - an existence placed halfway between the "thing" and the "representation." This conception of matter is simply that of common sense. It would greatly astonish a man unaware of the speculations of philosophy if we told him that the object before him, which he sees and touches, exists only in his mind and for his mind or even, more generally, exists only for mind, as Berkeley held. Such a man would always maintain that the object exists independently of the consciousness which perceives it. But, on the other hand, we should astonish him quite as much by telling him that the object is entirely different from that which is perceived in it, that it has neither the color ascribed to it by the eye nor the resistance found in it by the hand. The color, the resistance, are, for him, in the object: they are not states of our mind; they are part and parcel of an existence really independent of our own. For common sense, then, the object exists in itself, and, on the other hand, the object is, in itself, pictorial, as we perceive it: image it is, but a self-existing image.

This is just the sense in which we use the word image in our first chapter. We place ourselves at the point of view of a mind unaware of the disputes between philosophers. Such a mind would naturally believe that matter exists just as it is perceived; and, since it is perceived as an image, the mind would make of it, in itself, an image. In a word, we consider matter before the dissociation which idealism and realism have brought about between its existence and its appearance. No doubt it has become difficult to avoid this dissociation now that philosophers have made it. To forget it, however, is what we ask of the reader. If, in the course of this first chapter, objections arise in his mind against any of the views that we put forward, let him ask himself whether these objections do not imply his return to one or the other of the two points of view above which we urge him to rise.

Philosophy made a great step forward on the day when Berkeley proved, as against the "mechanical philosophers," that the secondary qualities of matter have at least as much reality as the primary qualities. His mistake lay in believing that, for this, it was necessary to place matter within the mind and make it into a pure idea. Descartes, no doubt, had put matter too far from us when he made it one with geometrical extensity. But, in order to bring it nearer to us, there was no need to go to the point of making it one with our own mind. Because he did go as far as this, Berkeley was unable to account for the success of physics, and, whereas Descartes had set up the mathematical relations between phenomena as their very essence, he was obliged to regard the mathematical order of the universe as a mere accident. So the Kantian criticism became necessary, to show the reason of this mathematical order and to give back to our physics a solid foundation - a task in which, however, it succeeded only by limiting the range and value of our senses and of our understanding. The criticism of Kant, on this point at least, would have been unnecessary; the human mind, in this direction at least, would not have been led to limit its own range; metaphysics would not have been sacrificed to physics, if philosophy had been content to leave matter half way between the place to which Descartes had driven it and that to which Berkeley drew it back - to leave it, in fact, where it is seen by common sense.

There we shall try to see it ourselves. Our first chapter defines this way of looking at matter; the last sets forth the consequences of such a view. But, as we said before, we treat of matter only in so far as it concerns the problem dealt with in our second and third chapters, that which is the subject of this essay: the problem of the relation between soul and body.

This relation, though it has been a favorite theme throughout the history of philosophy, has really been very little studied. If we leave on one side the theories which are content to state the "union of soul and body" as an irreducible and inexplicable fact, and those which speak vaguely of the body as an instrument of the soul, there remains hardly any other conception of the psychophysiological relation than the hypothesis of "epiphenomenalism" or that of "parallelism," which in practice - I mean in the interpretation of particular facts - both end in the same conclusion. For whether, indeed, thought is regarded as a mere function of the brain and the state of consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the state of the brain, or whether mental states and brain states are held to be two versions, in two different languages, of one and the same original, in either case it is laid down that, could we penetrate into the inside of a brain at work and behold the dance of the atoms which make up the cortex, and if, on the other hand, we possessed the key to psychophysiology, we should know every detail of what is going on in the corresponding consciousness.

This, indeed, is what is most commonly maintained by philosophers as well as by men of science. Yet it would be well to ask whether the facts, when examined without any preconceived idea, really suggest an hypothesis of this kind. that there is a close connection between a state of consciousness and the brain we do not dispute. But there is also a close connection between a coat and the nail on which it hangs, for, if the nail is pulled out, the coat falls to the ground. Shall we say, then, that the shape of the nail gives us the shape of the coat, or in any way correspond to it? No more are we entitled to conclude, that there is any parallelism between the two series psychical and physiological. When philosophy pleads that the theory of parallelism is born out of the results of positive science, it enters upon an unmistakably vicious circle; for, if science interprets connection, which is a fact, as signifying parallelism, which is an hypothesis (and an hypothesis to which it is difficult to attach an intelligible meaning), it does so, consciously or unconsciously, for reasons of a philosophical order: it is because science has been accustomed by a certain type of philosophy to believe that there is no hypothesis more probable, more in accordance with the interests of scientific inquiry.

Now, as soon as we do, indeed, apply to positive facts for such information as my help us to solve the problem, we find it is with memory that we have to deal. This was be expected, because memory - we shall try to prove in the course of this work - is just the intersection of mind and matter. But we may leave out the reason here: no one, at any rate, will deny that, among all the facts capable of throwing light on the psychophysiological relation, those which concern memory, whether in the normal or in the pathological state, hold a privileged position. Not only is the evidence here extremely abundant (consider the enormous mass of observations collected in regard to the various kinds of aphasia), but nowhere else have anatomy, physiology and psychology been able to lend each other such valuable aid. Anyone who approaches, without preconceived ideas and on the firm ground of facts, the classical problem of the relations of soul and body, will soon see this problem as centering upon the subject of memory, and, even more particularly, upon the memory of words: it is from this quarter, undoubtedly, that will come the light which will illumine the obscurer parts of the problem.

The reader will see how we try to solve it. Speaking generally, the physical state seems to us to be, in most cases, immensely wider than the cerebral state, I mean that the brain state indicates only a very small part of the mental state, that part which is capable of translating itself into movements and locomotion. Take a complex thought which unrolls itself in a chain of abstract reasoning. This thought is accompanied by images, that are at least nascent(freshly generated in a reactive form). And these images themselves are not pictured in consciousness without some foreshadowing, in the form of a sketch or a tendency, of the movements by which these images would be acted or played in space - would, that is to say, impress particular attitudes upon the body, and set free all that they implicitly contain of spatial movement. Now, of all the thought which is unrolling, this, in our view, is what the cerebral state indicates at every moment. he who could penetrate into the interior of a brain and see what happens there, would probably obtain full details of these sketched-out, or prepared, movements; there is no proof that he would learn anything else. Were he endowed with a superhuman intellect, did he possess the key to psychophysiology, he would know no more of what is going on in the corresponding consciousness than we should know of a play from the comings and goings of the actors upon the stage.

That is to say, the relation of the mental to the cerebral is not a constant, any more than it is simple, relation. According to the nature of the play that is being acted, the movements of the players tell us more or less about it: nearly everything, if it is a pantomime; next to nothing, if it is a delicate comedy. Thus our cerebral state contains more or less of our mental state in the measure that we reel off our psychic life into action or wind it up into pure knowledge.

There are then, in short, divers tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life. Here we have one of the ruling ideas of this book - the idea, indeed, which served as the starting point of our inquiry. That which is usually held to be a greater complexity of the psychical state appears to us, from our point of view, to be a greater dilatation of the whole personality, which, normally narrowed down by action, expands with the unscrewing of the vice in which it has allowed itself to be squeezed, and, always whole and undivided, spreads itself over a wider and wider surface. That which is commonly held to be a disturbance of the psychic life itself, an inward disorder, a disease of the personality, appears to us, from our point of view, to be an unloosing or a braking of the tie which binds this psychic life to its motor accompaniment, a weakening or an impairing of our attention to outward life. This opinion, as also that which denies the localization of the memory-images of words and explains aphasia quite otherwise than by such localization, was considered paradoxical at the date of the first publication of the present work (1896). It will appear much less so now. The conception of aphasia then classical, universally admitted, believed to be unshakable, has been considerably shaken in the last few years, chiefly by reasons of an anatomical order, but partly also by reasons of the same kind as those which we then advance. And the profound and original study of neuroses made by Professor Pierre Janet has led him, of late years, to explain all psychasthenic forms of disease by these same considerations of psychic "tension" and of attention to reality which were then presumed to be metaphysical.

In truth, it was not altogether a mistake to call them by that name. Without denying to psychology, any more than to metaphysics, the right to make itself into an independent science, we believe that each of these two sciences should set problems to the other and can, in a measure, help it to solve them. How should it be otherwise, if psychology has for its object the study of the human mind working for practical utility, and if metaphysics is but this same mind striving to transcend the conditions of useful action and to come back to itself as to a pure creative energy? Many problems, which appear foreign to each other as long as we are bound by the letter of the terms in which these two sciences state them, are seen to be very near akin, and to be able to solve each other when we thus penetrate into their inner meaning. We little thought, at the beginning of our inquiry, that there could be any connection between the analytical study of memory and the question, which is debated between realists and idealists or between mechanists and dynamists, with regard to the existence or the essence of matter. Yet this connection is real, it is even intimate; and, if we take it into account, a cardinal metaphysical problem is carried into the open field of observation, where it may be solved progressively, instead of forever giving rise to fresh disputes of the schools within the closed lists of pure dialectic. The complexity of some parts of the present work is due to the inevitable dovetailing of problems which results from approaching philosophy in such a way. But through this complexity, which is due to the complexity of reality itself, we believe that the reader will find his way if he keeps a fast hold on the two principles which we have used as a clue throughout our own researches. The first is that in psychological analysis we must never forget the utilitarian character of our mental functions, which are essential turned toward action. The second is that the habits formed in action find their way up to the sphere of speculation, where they create fictitious problems, and that metaphysics must begin by dispersing this artificial obscurity.

H. Bergson
Paris, October 1910

Michael Merzenich - Exploring the re-wiring of the brain part2

The first example I wanna talk about relates to children with learning impairments and we now have a large body of literature that demonstrates that the fundamental problem that occures in a majority of children that have early language impairments - and have a good struggle to learn to read - is that the language processor is created in a defective form. And the reason that it arises in a defective form is because early on in the babies brains life, the machine process is noisy. Its that simple. Its a simple noise problem.

A lot of things contribute to that. There are numerous inherent faults that could make the machine process noisier. The noise problem could also occure on the basis that information provided in the world of the ears - one that was called mental retardation. We knew that they where gonna struggle to learn to develop normal language abilities. And we knew that they where gonna struggle to learn to read. Most of them would be intellectual and academic failures. Thats disappeared. It no longer applies. That inherited weakness, that inherited condition has evaporated. We don't have that anymore. Where did it go?

It was understood by a dutch sergeant about 45 years ago that if you simply fix the problem early enough, when the brain is still in this initial plastic periode so it can setup this machinery adequately in this initial set up time (in a critical periode) non of that happens. And what do you do to correct it? You basically opening up the tubes that drain through it from the middle ears.

The child's native language in such a case is not english, its not japanese, its waffel english, its degraded japanese, its crap. And the brains specializes for it. It creates a representation of language crap. And now the child is stuck with it. And the crap doesn't just happen in the ear, it can also happen in the brain.

The brain itself can be noisy, its commonly noisy. There are many inheritent false that can make a noise here. And the native language for a child with such a brain is degraded. Its not english, its noisy english. And that results in defective representation of sounds or words. Not normal, a different strategy, a machine which has a different time and space concepts. And you look into the brain of such a child and record those time constance, where about an 11 times longer in duration on the average than a normal child. Space constance where about three times greater. Such a child will have memory and cognitive deficits in this domine. Of course they will. Because as the reciever of language, receiving it and representing it in an information thats representing crap.

And they gonna have poor reading skills, because reading is dependent upon the translation of word sounds into this orthographic or visual representational form. If you don't have a brain representation of word-sounds the translation makes no sense. And you gonna have cross bending abnormal neurology and all this children increasingly in evaluation after evaluation and there are operations in reading and language we document abnormal neurology. The point is that you can train the brain out of this. And the way to think about it is you can actually redefine the processing capacity of the machinery by changing it. Changing it in detail... It takes about 30 hours on the average. And we accomplished that in about 430.000 kids today.

And actually when you look at the impacts they are substantial. So here we look at the normal distribution. What we are most interested in is the kids on the left side of the distribution. This is from about 3000 children - and you can see that most of the kids on the left side of the distribution moving into the middle of the right. This is like an IQ test for language. The impact in the distribution if you trained every child in the US would be to shift the whole distribution to the right. This is a substantially impact. Think about a classroom of children or children in language arts. Think about children on the slow side of the class. We have the potential to move most of those children to the middle or right side.

In addition to add to language training it also fixes memory and cognition, speech fluency and speech production and an importent language depended skill is enabled by this training - namely reading. And to a large extend it fixes the brain. So you look down in the brain of a child in a variety of task as scientist have at Standfort, MIT and UCISA, UCLA and a number of other institutions. And children operating in variouse language behaviours or reading behaviours you see for the most extend for most children their neuronal responses - complexly abnormal before you start - are normalised by the training.

And you can also take the same approach to address problems in aging. Where again the machinery is deteriorating now the compliment machinery is going south, noise is increasing in the brain and learning modulation and control is deteriorating. And you can actually look down on such a brain and withness a change in the time constance and space constance with which the brain is representing language again.

Just as the brain came out of chaos at the beginning it goes back in the chaos in the end. And this results in declines of memory, in cognition and in posture mobility and agility. It turns out you can train the brain of such an individual for about 30 hours. And what you see is substantial improvements of their immediate memory, their ability to remember things after a delay, the ability to control their attention, their language and visual/spacial ability.

The Neuropsychological index of trained individuals in that population is about two standard deviations. That means if you sit at the left side of the distribution, I am looking at your neuropsychological abilities, the average person is moved to the middle or the right side of the distribution. It means most people who are at risk of senility more or less immediately are now in a protective possition.

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