and bodily action, and each mental phenomenon interests all these planes
simultaneously, and is thus repeated in a thousand higher tones, like the
harmonies of one and the same note.

Or, if you prefer it, the life of the spirit is not the uniform transparent
surface of a mere; rather it is a gushing spring which, at first pent in,
spreads upwards and outwards, like a sheaf of corn, passing through many
different states, from the dark and concentrated welling of the source to
the gleam of the scattered tumbling spray; and each of its moods presents
in its turn a similar character, being itself only a thread within the
whole. Such without doubt is the central and activating idea of the
admirable book entitled "Matter and Memory". I cannot possibly condense
its substance here, or convey its astonishing synthetic power, which
succeeds in contracting a complete metaphysic, and in gripping it so firmly
that the examination ends by passing to the discussion of a few humble
facts relative to the philosophy of the brain! But its technical severity
and its very conciseness, combined with the wealth it contains, render it
irresumable; and I can only in a few words indicate its conclusions.

First of all, however little we pride ourselves on positive method, we must
admit the existence of an internal world, of a spiritual activity distinct
from matter and its mechanism. No chemistry of the brain, no dance of
atoms, is equivalent to the least thought, or indeed to the least
sensation.

Some, it is true, have brought forward a thesis of parallelism, according
to which each mental phenomenon corresponds point by point to a phenomenon
in the brain, without adding anything to it, without influencing its
course, merely translating it into another tongue, so that a glance
sufficiently penetrating to follow the molecular revolutions and the fluxes