aphasia." The commonest causes of this disease are lesions, affecting
the special nerve centres, due to haemorrhage or the development of
tumours, being in the one case rapid, in the other a gradual
development. Of course any severe excitement, fright or illness,
involving a disturbance of the normal circulation in the cerebral
centres, may produce asphasia. During the war, it has been one of the
afflictions of a large number of the victims of "shell-shock." But,
whatever be the cause, the patient is reduced mentally to an elementary
state, resembling that of a child, and needs re-educating in the
elements of language.

Now, from his careful study of the pathological phenomena, manifested in
these cases, Bergson draws some very important conclusions in regard to
the nature of Memory and its relation to the brain. In 1896, when he
brought out his work Matiere et Memoire, in Paris, the general view was
against his conclusions and his opinions were ridiculed. By 1910, a
marked change had come about and he was able to refer to this in the new
introduction.[Footnote: See Bibliography, p. 158.] His view was no
longer considered paradoxical. The conception of aphasia, once
classical, universally admitted, believed to be unshakeable, had been
considerably shaken in that period of fourteen years. Localization, and
reference to centres would not, it was found, explain things
sufficiently.[Footnote: The work of Pierre Janet was largely influential
also in bringing about this change of view.] This involved a too rigid
and mechanical conception of the brain as a mere "box," and Bergson
attacks it very forcibly under the name of "the box theory." "All the
arguments," he says, "from fact which may be invoked in favour of a
probable accumulation of memories in the cortical substance, are drawn
from local disorders of memory. But if recollections were really
deposited in the brain, to definite gaps in memory characteristic