fulfilment of guesswork.

It is the direction of this work that we are concerned to determine.

According to the popular idea, perception has a completely speculative
interest: it is pure knowledge. Therein lies the fundamental mistake.

Notice first of all how much more probable it is, a priori, that the work
of perception, just as any other natural and spontaneous work, should have
a utilitarian signification.

"Life," says Mr Bergson with justice, "is the acceptance from objects of
nothing but the useful impression, with the response of the appropriate
reactions." ("Laughter", page 154.)

And this view receives striking objective confirmation if, with the author
of "Matter and Memory", we follow the progress of the perceptive functions
along the animal series from the protoplasm to the higher vertebrates; or
if, with him, we analyse the task of the body, and discover that the
nervous system is manifested in its very structure as, before all, an
instrument of action. Have we not already besides proof of this in the
fact that each of us always appears in his own eyes to occupy the centre of
the world he perceives?

The "Riquet" of Anatole France voices Mr Bergson's view: "I am always in
the centre of everything, and men and beasts and things, for or against me,
range themselves around."

But direct analysis leads us still more plainly to the same conclusion.