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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
shape of images, but as tendencies of the soul. All knowledge is stored up that way. Bergson is right in holding that we act with our entire past, for knowledge implies the training of will by altering and modifying its impulses which determine the automatic activity of the soul.
We might now turn our attention to the problem of the association of ideas. The question is : what is the force which drags out impressions and recollections of the past from the depths of the unconscious ?
We have said that perception is the reaction of the mind on the incoming stimulus, and but for it would be reduced to pure mechanical movements set up by the external excitation. The intensity and pitch of the vibrations coming from without set the mind vibrating in about the same way as a violin string is set in sympathetic response by its note being struck in its vicinity. This gives us resernblanco, which is felt rather than thought, in the first instance. But mind is not a solitary chord in the organism ; it is a centre of force which implies the pencilling of an infinite number of interpenetrating currents of different intensity and rhythm at a lived from our birth-nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions ? Doubtless, we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea.... We could not live over again a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing the memory of all that had followed. Even could we erase this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will."- Creative Evolution, pp. 5 and 6.
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