is said that I know my lesson by heart, that it is imprinted on my memory.  I consider now how the lesson has been learnt and picture to myself the successive phases of the process.  Each several reading then recurs to me with its own individuality.  It is distinguished from those which preceded or followed it, by the place which it occupied in time; in short, each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in my history.  Again it will be said that these images are recollections, that they are imprinted on my Memory.  The same words then are used in both cases.  Do they mean the same thing?  The memory of the lesson which is remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has all the marks of a habit.  Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort.  Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the same order and together take the same length of time.  The memory of each several reading, on the contrary, has none of the marks of a habit, it is like an event in my life; it is a case of spontaneous recollection as distinct from mere learnt recollection.  Now a learnt recollection passes out of time in the measure that the lesson is better known; it becomes more and more impersonal, more and more foreign to our past life."[Footnote:  Matter and Memory, pp. 89-90 (Fr. pp. 75-76).] This quotation makes clear that of these two forms of Memory, it is the power of spontaneous recollection which is Memory par excellence and constitutes “real” Memory.  The other, to which psychologists usually have devoted most of their attention in discussing the problem of Memory, is habit interpreted as Memory, rather than Memory itself.  Having thus made clear this valuable and fundamental distinction—­“one of the best things in Bergson"[Footnote:  Bertrand Russell’s remark in his Philosophy of Bergson, p. 7.]—­and having shown that in practical life the automatic memory necessarily plays an important part, often inhibiting “pure” Memory, Bergson proceeds to examine and criticize certain views of Memory itself, and endeavours finally to demonstrate to us what he himself considers it to be.

He takes up the cudgels to attack the view which aims at blending Memory with Perception, as being of like kind.  Memory, he argues, must be distinguished from Perception, however much we admit (and rightly) that memories enter into and colour all our perceptions.  They are quite different in their nature.  A remembrance is the representation of an absent object.  We distinguish between hearing a faint tap at the door, and the faint memory of a loud one.  We cannot admit the validity of the statement that there is only a difference of intensity between Perception and Recollection.  “As our perception of a present object is something of that object itself, our representation of the absent object, as in Memory,