Memory and Recollection

Abstract

Mr Descartes explained very well most of the interactions between body and mind in the Treatise on Man, where he compared the body with one of those hydraulic machines in which water makes a number of different figures move differently according to the varying arrangements of the tubes which carry the water, and where he said that our mind is like a fountaineer who is constantly busy watching where the water collects, observing the various paths which the water follows, or changing, preventing or encouraging its movements.¹⁸⁷ To complete the comparison, one could add that there is a mill nearby which provides and moves the water which makes all the parts of the machine work and that it sometimes provides more and sometimes less water. In the middle of the opening where the greatest discharge takes place, there is a little boat which is situated in such a way that, depending on the flow of water coming from the mill or the impulse which the fountaineer gives it (I imagine him lodged inside it and so attached to it that he cannot raise his head above the sides), it pushes the water into some of the tubes which terminate at this opening and thereby moves the figures into which these tubes discharge. It must also be assumed that these tubes are made of leather rather than of wood, lead or earthenware, so that they can expand in proportion to the volume of water which enters them. One will easily see that this fountaineer, thus hidden in the boat — which sometimes leans in one direction and sometimes in another, depending on the impact of the water which flows from the mill or the effect of the tubes which have just opened — should be aware of four very significant things.