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cannot take shape or materialize themselves. Now, a lesion of the brain centers just does this and no more: in perception it interrupts the external stimulus, in recollection, the internal. It does not affect the ego otherwise, nor diminish its individuality or life in any way. If you ask me where memory is preserved, I must tell you to search for it within that mysterious faculty known as attention. The current of activities of life, already alluded to, is loaded with the entire past experience preserved in the form of modifications of its constituents, and its point is the organ of attention, which is now turned to this and now to that channel of information or communication with the outer world. It is the high tension of attention (from ad, to, and tendo, to stretch) which keeps the mind engaged in the present and which prevents the stimuli of the other senses than the one to which it is actually directed at any particular moment of time from penetrating to the ego. But when this high tension is slackened, the rhythm of the current of activities is changed, and the slower tones and vibrations resulting from the relaxing of at-tention come into play. It is the operation of these slower tones and vibrations which, in collaboration with the so-called memory centres of the brain, is responsible for the reproductions of the mind known as memory. In different words, in recollecttion the tones and vibrations come from attention while in perception they come from the external object. In both cases the brain centres only furnish the sensory
CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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