Matter and Memory: Essay on the Relation of Body to Mind

1. Introduction

Matter and Memory: Essay on the Relation of Body to Mind is a late‑19th‑century philosophical treatise by Henri Bergson that re-examines the mind–body problem through a detailed analysis of perception and memory. Written in French and first published in 1896, it occupies a central place in Bergson’s oeuvre between Time and Free Will (1889) and Creative Evolution (1907).

The work is often classified as both a contribution to metaphysics and to the philosophy of mind, but it is also deeply engaged with the psychology and neurology of its time. Bergson confronts materialist, associationist, and neo‑Kantian positions by proposing that the world consists of images, that the body is one such image with a privileged role in action, and that memory cannot be reduced to brain processes.

Because of its technical vocabulary, engagement with case studies from brain science, and abstract argumentation, the treatise is widely regarded as one of Bergson’s most challenging works. It has nonetheless been influential across several traditions, including phenomenology, existentialism, and contemporary theories of embodied and enactive cognition, and is frequently cited for its distinction between habit-memory and pure memory and its reconfiguration of the relation between matter and consciousness.

2. Historical Context

2.1 Intellectual Climate in Late 19th‑Century France

Matter and Memory emerged in a period marked by rapid development in experimental psychology, psychophysiology, and neurology, especially in Parisian institutions such as the Salpêtrière. Debates about cerebral localization, aphasia, and the neural basis of memory provided much of the scientific backdrop to Bergson’s project.

At the same time, French philosophy was shaped by spiritualist legacies (Maine de Biran, Ravaisson), neo‑Kantian epistemology, and positivist or materialist currents that emphasized scientific explanation. Bergson’s work positions itself among these, using empirical findings while questioning reductionist interpretations.

2.2 Contemporary Scientific and Philosophical Debates

Key controversies included:

Bergson’s treatise engages all three debates by recasting perception as oriented toward action, challenging the notion that memory is stored as localized brain deposits, and proposing a non-Cartesian dualism of tendencies rather than substances, while drawing explicitly on contemporary neurological case material.

3. Author and Composition

3.1 Bergson’s Intellectual Trajectory

When composing Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was an established philosopher who had already published Time and Free Will (1889). That earlier work introduced his notion of duration (durée) and criticized spatialized conceptions of inner life. Matter and Memory extends these concerns to the external world, perception, and the body.

Bergson had been trained at the École Normale Supérieure and influenced by figures such as Jules Lachelier, to whom the book is dedicated. His dual competence in classical philosophy and contemporary science shaped the interdisciplinary character of the treatise.

3.2 Composition and Publication

Scholars generally date the main composition to 1894–1896, with Bergson reworking earlier lectures and notes on psychology and metaphysics. The book appeared in 1896 with the Parisian publisher Félix Alcan, within the “Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine” series.

Bergson explicitly signals his reliance on clinical neurology and experimental psychology, integrating case reports from authors such as Charcot, Broca, and Wernicke. Commentators note that he aimed to address both philosophers and scientists, which partly explains the hybrid style that moves between conceptual analysis and detailed discussion of empirical studies.

3.3 Position within Bergson’s Work

4. Structure and Organization

4.1 Overall Division

Matter and Memory is organized into four Books, each advancing a specific stage of Bergson’s argument from perception to metaphysics:

4.2 Internal Progression

The treatise proceeds from relatively concrete analyses to increasingly abstract reflections:

• Book I introduces the notion of image and presents the body as a center of indetermination in a field of images.
• Book II analyzes neurological data and argues that the brain is an organ of selection and transmission rather than storage.
• Book III offers a stratified theory of memory, culminating in the cone of memory diagram to depict different planes of consciousness.
• Book IV synthesizes the account of perception and memory into a general picture of matter and spirit as divergent tendencies within one reality.

The progression is designed so that later metaphysical claims depend on the preceding, more descriptive examinations of perception, action, and recollection.

5. Central Arguments and Key Concepts

5.1 The Ontology of Images and Perception

Bergson’s starting point is the claim that the world, including our bodies, consists of images, where an image is “a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing.” Perception is treated as a selection from this field of images, oriented by possible action rather than by contemplative knowledge.

Proponents of action-oriented readings emphasize Bergson’s insistence that perception subtracts more than it adds: the body filters the surrounding images to highlight what is useful for movement and intervention.

5.2 Brain Function: Selection, Not Storage

A central argumentative thread contends that the brain does not store memories but organizes sensorimotor circuits. Bergson analyzes aphasia and lesion cases to suggest that damage impairs the ability to use memories in action, without necessarily annihilating the memories themselves.

Supporters of this interpretation view Bergson as anticipating later models of distributed or extra-neural memory. Critics argue that he underestimates the role of synaptic and neural plasticity, and that subsequent neuroscience provides stronger evidence for engram-like memory traces.

5.3 Habit-Memory vs. Pure Memory

Bergson distinguishes:

He argues that confusing these leads to philosophical and psychological errors, including treating all memory as if it were merely a bodily habit.

5.4 Mind–Body Relation as Duality of Tendencies

The culmination of these analyses is a conception of matter and spirit as two tendencies within a single reality: matter tends toward spatialization and determinism, spirit toward duration, freedom, and memory. Many commentators see in this a non-Cartesian dualism that rejects both mechanistic materialism and absolute idealism. Others question whether the ontology of images is sufficiently clear to sustain this intermediate position.

6. Legacy and Historical Significance

6.1 Immediate Reception and Early Influence

Upon publication, Matter and Memory attracted attention in French academic circles for its ambitious fusion of science and metaphysics. Philosophers and psychologists sympathetic to anti-reductionist approaches praised its originality, while some neurologists and positivists expressed reservations about its critique of localization theories and its dualist implications.

The work contributed substantially to Bergson’s rise as a prominent French philosopher in the early 20th century, shaping debates in France, Italy, and the Anglophone world about consciousness, free will, and the role of time in experience.

6.2 Long-Term Philosophical Impact

Over the 20th century, Matter and Memory influenced several major currents:

Some contemporary theorists of enactivism and extended mind cite Bergson’s action-oriented view of perception and his decentering of the brain as a storage device as anticipations of their own positions, though these links remain a matter of interpretation.

6.3 Ongoing Debates

The book continues to generate discussion on several fronts: the empirical adequacy of its claims about the brain, the coherence of its ontology of images, and the status of its hints regarding the possible survival of consciousness beyond bodily life. Commentators remain divided over whether Matter and Memory should be read primarily as a speculative metaphysics, as a proto‑phenomenological analysis, or as an historically situated intervention in late‑19th‑century brain science, with many accounts emphasizing its significance across all three dimensions.