THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES
FREE WILL
[Sidenote: Mechanism, dynamism and free will.]
It is easy to see why the question of free will brings into conflict
these two rival systems of nature, mechanism and dynamism. Dynamism
starts from the idea of voluntary activity, given by consciousness,
and comes to represent inertia by gradually emptying this idea: it has
thus no difficulty in conceiving free force on the one hand and matter
governed by laws on the other. Mechanism follows the opposite course.
It assumes that the materials which it synthesizes are governed by
necessary laws, and although it reaches richer and richer combinations,
which are more and more difficult to foresee, and to all appearance
more and more contingent, yet it never gets out of the narrow circle of
necessity within which it at first shut itself up.
[Sidenote: For dynamism facts more real than laws: mechanism reverses
this attitude. This idea of spontaneity simpler than that of inertia.]
A thorough examination of these two conceptions of nature will show
that they involve two very different hypotheses as to the relations
between laws and the facts which they govern. As he looks higher and
higher, the believer in dynamism thinks that he perceives facts which
more and more elude the grasp of laws: he thus sets up the fact as the
absolute reality, and the law as the more or less symbolical expression
of this reality. Mechanism, on the contrary, discovers within the
particular fact a certain number of laws of which the fact is thus made
to be the meeting point, and nothing else: on this hypothesis it is the
law which becomes the genuine reality. Now, if it is asked why the one
party assigns a higher reality to the fact and the other to the law, it
will be found that mechanism and dynamism take the word _simplicity_ in
two very different senses. For the first, any principle is simple of
which the effects can be foreseen and even calculated: thus, by the
very definition, the notion of inertia becomes simpler than that of
freedom, the homogeneous simpler than the heterogeneous, the abstract
simpler than the concrete. But dynamism is not anxious so much to
arrange the notions in the most convenient order as to find out their
real relationship: often, in fact, the so-called simple notion--that
which the believer in mechanism regards as primitive--has been obtained
by the blending together of several richer notions which seem to be
derived from it, and which have more or less neutralized one another
in this very process of blending, just as darkness may be produced by
the interference of two lights. Regarded from this new point of view,
the idea of spontaneity is indisputably simpler than that of inertia,
since the second can be understood and defined only by means of the
first, while the first is self-sufficient. For each of us has the
immediate knowledge (be it thought true or fallacious) of his free
spontaneity, without the notion of inertia having anything to do with
this knowledge. But, if we wish to define the inertia of matter, we
must say that it cannot move or stop of its own accord, that every body
perseveres in the state of rest or motion so long as it is not acted
upon by any force: and in both cases we are unavoidably carried back
to the idea of activity. It is therefore natural that, _a priori,_ we
should reach two opposite conceptions of human activity, according to
the way in which we understand the relation between the concrete and
the abstract, the simple and the complex, facts and laws.
[Sidenote: Determinism: (1) physical (2) psychological. Former
reducible to latter, which itself rests on inaccurate conception of
multiplicity of conscious states or duration.]
_A posteriori,_ however, definite facts are appealed to against
freedom, some physical, others psychological. Sometimes it is asserted
that our actions are necessitated by our feelings, our ideas, and the
whole preceding series of our conscious states; sometimes freedom
is denounced as being incompatible with the fundamental properties
of matter, and in particular with the principle of the conservation
of energy. Hence two kinds of determinism, two apparently different
empirical proofs of universal necessity. We shall show that the second
of these two forms is reducible to the first, and that all determinism,
even physical determinism, involves a psychological hypothesis: we
shall then prove that psychological determinism itself, and the
refutations which are given of it, rest on an inaccurate conception of
the multiplicity of conscious states, or rather of duration. Thus, in
the light of the principles worked out in the foregoing chapter, we
shall see a self emerge whose activity cannot be compared to that of
any other force.
[Sidenote: Physical determinism stated in the language of the molecular
theory of matter.]
Physical determinism, in its latest form, is closely bound up with
mechanical or rather kinetic theories of matter. The universe is
pictured as a heap of matter which the imagination resolves into
molecules and atoms. These particles are supposed to carry out
unceasingly movements of every kind, sometimes of vibration, sometimes
of translation; and physical phenomena, chemical action, the qualities
of matter which our senses perceive, heat, sound, electricity, perhaps
even attraction, are thought to be reducible objectively to these
elementary movements. The matter which goes to make up organized
bodies being subject to the same laws, we find in the nervous system,
for example, only molecules and atoms which are in motion and attract
and repel one another. Now if all bodies, organized or unorganized,
thus act and react on one another in their ultimate parts, it is
obvious that the molecular state of the brain at a given moment will
be modified by the shocks which the nervous system receives from the
surrounding matter, so that the sensations, feelings and ideas which
succeed one another in us can be defined as mechanical resultants,
obtained by the compounding of shocks received from without with the
previous movements of the atoms of the nervous substance. But the
opposite phenomenon may occur; and the molecular movements which go
on in the nervous system, if compounded with one another or with
others, will often give as resultant a reaction of our organism on its
environment: hence the reflex movements, hence also the so-called free
and voluntary actions. As, moreover, the principle of the conservation
of energy has been assumed to admit of no exception, there is not an
atom, either in the nervous system or in the whole of the universe,
whose position is not determined by the sum of the mechanical actions
which the other atoms exert upon it. And the mathematician who knew
the position of the molecules or atoms of a human organism at a given
moment, as well as the position and motion of all the atoms in the
universe capable of influencing it, could calculate with unfailing
certainty the past, present and future actions of the person to
whom this organism belongs, just as one predicts an astronomical
phenomenon.[1]
[Sidenote: If principle of conservation of energy is universal,
physiological and nervous phenomena are necessitated, but perhaps not
conscious states.]
We shall not raise any difficulty about recognizing that this
conception of physiological phenomena in general, and nervous
phenomena in particular, is a very natural deduction from the law of
the conservation of energy. Certainly, the atomic theory of matter is
still at the hypothetical stage, and the purely kinetic explanations
of physical facts lose more than they gain by being too closely bound
up with it. We must observe, however, that, even if we leave aside the
atomic theory as well as any other hypothesis as to the nature of the
ultimate elements of matter, the necessitating of physiological facts
by their antecedents follows from the theorem of the conservation of
energy, as soon as we extend this theorem to all processes going on in
all living bodies. For to admit the universality of this theorem is
to assume, at bottom, that the material points of which the universe
is composed are subject solely to forces of attraction and repulsion,
arising from these points themselves and possessing intensities which
depend only on their distances: hence the relative position of these
material points at a given moment--whatever be their nature--would
be strictly determined by relation to what it was at the preceding
moment. Let us then assume for a moment that this last hypothesis is
true: we propose to show, in the first place, that it does not involve
the absolute determination of our conscious states by one another, and
then that the very universality of the principle of the conservation
of energy cannot be admitted except in virtue of some psychological
hypothesis.
Sidenote: To prove conscious states determined, we should have to show
a necessary connexion between them and cerebral states. No such proof.
Even if we assumed that the position, the direction and the velocity of
each atom of cerebral matter are determined at every moment of time, it
would not at all follow that our psychic life is subject to the same
necessity. For we should first have to prove that a strictly determined
psychic state corresponds to a definite cerebral state, and the proof
of this is still to be given. As a rule we do not think of demanding
it, because we know that a definite vibration of the tympanum, a
definite stimulation of the auditory nerve, gives a definite note on
the scale, and because the parallelism of the physical and psychical
series has been proved in a fairly large number of cases. But then,
nobody has ever contended that we were free, under given conditions, to
hear any note or perceive any colour we liked. Sensations of this kind,
like many other psychic states, are obviously bound up with certain
determining conditions, and it is just for this reason that it has been
possible to imagine or discover beneath them a system of movements
which obey our abstract mechanics. In short, wherever we succeed in
giving a mechanical explanation, we observe a fairly strict parallelism
between the physiological and the psychological series, and we need not
be surprised at it, since explanations of this kind will assuredly not
be met with except where the two series exhibit parallel terms. But
to extend this parallelism to the series themselves in their totality
is to settle _a priori_ the problem of freedom. Certainly this may be
done, and some of the greatest thinkers have set the example; but then,
as we said at first, it was not for reasons of a physical order that
they asserted the strict correspondence between states of consciousness
and modes of extension. Leibniz ascribed it to a preestablished
harmony, and would never have admitted that a motion could give rise
to a perception as a cause produces an effect. Spinoza said that the
modes of thought and the modes of extension correspond with but never
influence one another: they only express in two different languages the
same eternal truth. But the theories of physical determinism which are
rife at the present day are far from displaying the same clearness,
the same geometrical rigour. They point to molecular movements taking
place in the brain: consciousness is supposed to arise out of these
at times in some mysterious way, or rather to follow their track like
the phosphorescent line which results from the rubbing of a match. Or
yet again we are to think of an invisible musician playing behind the
scenes while the actor strikes a keyboard the notes of which yield no
sound: consciousness must be supposed to come from an unknown region
and to be superimposed on the molecular vibrations, just as the melody
is on the rhythmical movements of the actor. But, whatever image
we fall back upon, we do not prove and we never shall prove by any
reasoning that the psychic fact is fatally determined by the molecular
movement. For in a movement we may find the reason of another movement,
but not the reason of a conscious state: only observation can prove
that the latter accompanies the former. Now the unvarying conjunction
of the two terms has not been verified by experience except in a very
limited number of cases and with regard to facts which all confess to
be almost independent of the will. But it is easy to understand why
physical determinism extends this conjunction to all possible cases.
[Sidenote: Physical determinism, when assumed to be universal,
postulates psychological determinism.]
Consciousness indeed informs us that the majority of our actions can
be explained by motives. But it does not appear that determination
here means necessity, since common sense believes in free will. The
determinist, however, led astray by a conception of duration and
causality which we shall criticise a little later, holds that the
determination of conscious states by one another is absolute. This is
the origin of associationist determinism, an hypothesis in support of
which the testimony of consciousness is appealed to, but which cannot,
in the beginning, lay claim to scientific rigour. It seems natural
that this, so to speak, approximate determinism, this determinism of
quality, should seek support from the same mechanism that underlies
the phenomena of nature: the latter would thus convey to the former
its own geometrical character, and the transaction would be to the
advantage both of psychological determinism, which would emerge from it
in a stricter form, and of physical mechanism, which would then spread
over everything. A fortunate circumstance favours this alliance. The
simplest psychic states do in fact occur as accessories to well-defined
physical phenomena, and the greater number of sensations seem to be
bound up with definite molecular movements. This mere beginning of an
experimental proof is quite enough for the man who, for psychological
reasons, is already convinced that our conscious states are the
necessary outcome of the circumstances under which they happen.
Henceforth he no longer hesitates to hold that the drama enacted in the
theatre of consciousness is a literal and even slavish translation of
some scenes performed by the molecules and atoms of organized matter.
The physical determinism which is reached in this way is nothing but
psychological determinism, seeking to verify itself and fix its own
outlines by an appeal to the sciences of nature.
[Sidenote: Is the principle of conservation of energy universal valid?]
But we must own that the amount of freedom which is left to us after
strictly complying with the principle of the conservation of energy is
rather limited. For, even if this law does not exert a necessitating
influence over the course of our ideas, it will at least determine our
movements. Our inner life will still depend upon ourselves up to a
certain point; but, to an outside observer, there will be nothing to
distinguish our activity from absolute automatism. We are thus led to
inquire whether the very extension of the principle of the conservation
of energy to all the bodies in nature does not itself involve some
psychological theory, and whether the scientist who did not possess _a
priori_ any prejudice against human freedom would think of setting up
this principle as a universal law.
[Sidenote: It implies that a system can return to its original state.
Neglects duration, hence inapplicable to living beings and conscious
states.]
We must not overrate the part played by the principle of the
conservation of energy in the history of the natural sciences. In its
present form it marks a certain phase in the evolution of certain
sciences; but it has not been the governing factor in this evolution
and we should be wrong in making it the indispensable postulate of all
scientific research. Certainly, every mathematical operation which we
carry out on a given quantity implies the permanence of this quantity
throughout the course of the operation, in whatever way we may split
it up. In other words, what is given is given, what is not given is
not given, and in whatever order we add up the same terms we shall
get the same result. Science will for ever remain subject to this
law, which is nothing but the law of non-contradiction; but this law
does not involve any special hypothesis as to the nature of what we
ought to take as given, or what will remain constant. No doubt it
informs us that something cannot come from nothing; but experience
alone will tell us which aspects or functions of reality must count for
something, and which for nothing, from the point of view of positive
science. In short, in order to foresee the state of a determinate
system at a determinate moment, it is absolutely necessary that
something should persist as a constant quantity throughout a series
of combinations; but it belongs to experience to decide as to the
nature of this something, and especially to let us know whether it is
found in all possible systems, whether, in other words, all possible
systems lend themselves to our calculations. It is not certain that
all the physicists before Leibniz believed, like Descartes, in the
conservation of a fixed quantity of motion in the universe: were their
discoveries less valuable on this account or their researches less
successful? Even when Leibniz had substituted for this principle that
of the conservation of _vis viva,_ it was not possible to regard the
law as quite general, since it admitted of an obvious exception in the
case of the direct impact of two inelastic bodies. Thus science has
done for a very long time without a universal conservative principle.
In its present form, and since the development of the mechanical theory
of heat, the principle of the conservation of energy certainly seems
to apply to the whole range of physico-chemical phenomena. But no one
can tell whether the study of physiological phenomena in general, and
of nervous phenomena in particular, will not reveal to us, besides the
_vis viva_ or kinetic energy of which Leibniz spoke, and the potential
energy which was a later and necessary adjunct, some new kind of energy
which may differ from the other two by rebelling against calculation.
Physical science would not thereby lose any of its exactitude or
geometrical rigour, as has lately been asserted: only it would be
realized that conservative systems are not the only systems possible,
and even, perhaps, that in the whole of concrete reality each of these
systems plays the same part as the chemist's atom in bodies and their
combinations. Let us note that the most radical of mechanical theories
is that which makes consciousness an _epiphenomenon_ which, in given
circumstances, may supervene on certain molecular movements. But, if
molecular movement can create sensation out of a zero of consciousness,
why should not consciousness in its turn create movement either out of
a zero of kinetic and potential energy, or by making use of this energy
in its own way? Let us also note that the law of the conservation
of energy can only be intelligibly applied to a system of which the
points, after moving, can return to their former positions. This return
is at least conceived of as possible, and it is supposed that under
these conditions nothing would be changed in the original state of
the system as a whole or of its elements. In short, time cannot bite
into it; and the instinctive, though vague, belief of mankind in the
conservation of a fixed quantity of matter, a fixed quantity of energy,
perhaps has its root in the very fact that inert matter does not seem
to endure or to preserve any trace of past time. But this is not the
case in the realm of life. Here duration certainly seems to act like a
cause, and the idea of putting things back in their place at the end
of a certain time involves a kind of absurdity, since such a turning
backwards has never been accomplished in the case of a living being.
But let us admit that the absurdity is a mere appearance, and that the
impossibility for living beings to come back to the past is simply
owing to the fact that the physico-chemical phenomena which take place
in living bodies, being infinitely complex, have no chance of ever
occurring again all at the same time: at least it will be granted to
us that the hypothesis of a turning backwards is almost meaningless
in the sphere of conscious states. A sensation, by the mere fact of
being prolonged, is altered to the point of becoming unbearable. The
same does not here remain the same, but is reinforced and swollen
by the whole of its past. In short, while the material point, as
mechanics understands it, remains in an eternal present, the past
is a reality perhaps for living bodies, and certainly for conscious
beings. While past time is neither a gain nor a loss for a system
assumed to be conservative, it may be a gain for the living being, and
it is indisputably one for the conscious being. Such being the case,
is there not much to be said for the hypothesis of a conscious force
or free will, which, subject to the action of time and storing up
duration, may thereby escape the law of the conservation of energy?
[Sidenote: The idea of the universality of conservation depends on
confusion between concrete duration and abstract time.]
In truth, it is not a wish to meet the requirements of positive
science, but rather a psychological mistake which has caused this
abstract principle of mechanics to be set up as a universal law. As
we are not accustomed to observe ourselves directly, but perceive
ourselves through forms borrowed from the external world, we are led
to believe that real duration, the duration lived by consciousness,
is the same as the duration which glides over the inert atoms without
penetrating and altering them. Hence it is that we do not see any
absurdity in putting things back in their place after a lapse of time,
in supposing the same motives acting afresh on the same persons, and
in concluding that these causes would again produce the same effect.
That such an hypothesis has no real meaning is what we shall prove
later on. For the present let us simply show that, if once we enter
upon this path, we are of course led to set up the principle of the
conservation of energy as a universal law. For we have thereby got
rid of just that difference between the outer and the inner world
which a close examination shows to be the main one: we have identified
true duration with apparent duration. After this it would be absurd
to consider time, even _our_ time, as a cause of gain or loss, as a
concrete reality, or a force in its own way. Thus, while we ought only
to say (if we kept aloof from all presuppositions concerning free will)
that the law of the conservation of energy governs physical phenomena
and _may,_ one day, be extended to all phenomena if psychological facts
also prove favourable to it, we go far beyond this, and, under the
influence of a metaphysical prepossession, we lay down the principle of
the conservation of energy as a law which _should_ govern all phenomena
whatever, or must be supposed to do so until psychological facts have
actually spoken against it. Science, properly so called, has therefore
nothing to do with all this. We are simply confronted with a confusion
between concrete duration and abstract time, two very different things.
In a word, the so-called physical determinism is reducible at bottom
to a psychological determinism, and it is this latter doctrine, as we
hinted at first, that we have to examine.
[Sidenote: Psychological determinism depends on associationist
conception of mind.]
Psychological determinism, in its latest and most precise shape,
implies an associationist conception of mind. The existing state of
consciousness is first thought of as necessitated by the preceding
states, but it is soon realized that this cannot be a geometrical
necessity, such as that which connects a resultant, for example, with
its components. For between successive conscious states there exists
a difference of quality which will always frustrate any attempt to
deduce any one of them _a priori_ from its predecessors. So experience
is appealed to, with the object of showing that the transition from
one psychic state to another can always be explained by some simple
reason, the second obeying as it were the call of the first. Experience
really does show this: and, as for ourselves, we shall willingly admit
that there always is some relation between the existing state of
consciousness and any new state to which consciousness passes. But is
this relation, which explains the transition, the cause of it?
[Sidenote: The series of associations may be merely an ex post facto
attempt to account for a new idea.]
May we here give an account of what we have personally observed? In
resuming a conversation which had been interrupted for a few moments
we have happened to notice that both we ourselves and our friend were
thinking of some new object at the same time.--The reason is, it
will be said, that each has followed up for his own part the natural
development of the idea at which the conversation had stopped: the
same series of associations has been formed on both sides.--No doubt
this interpretation holds good in a fairly large number of cases;
careful inquiry, however, has led us to an unexpected result. It is a
fact that the two speakers do connect the new subject of conversation
with the former one: they will even point out the intervening ideas;
but, curiously enough, they will not always connect the new idea,
which they have both reached, with the same point of the preceding
conversation, and the two series of intervening associations may be
quite different. What are we to conclude from this, if not that this
common idea is due to an unknown cause--perhaps to some physical
influence--and that, in order to justify its emergence, it has called
forth a series of antecedents which explain it and which seem to be its
cause, but are really its effect?
[Sidenote: Illustration from hypnotic suggestion.]
When a patient carries out at the appointed time the suggestion
received in the hypnotic state, the act which he performs is brought
about, according to him, by the preceding series of his conscious
states. Yet these states are really effects, and not causes: it was
necessary that the act should take place; it was also necessary that
the patient should explain it to himself; and it is the future act
which determined, by a kind of attraction, the whole series of psychic
states of which it is to be the natural consequence. The determinists
will seize on this argument: it proves as a matter of fact that we are
sometimes irresistibly subject to another's will. But does it not also
show us how our own will is capable of willing for willing's sake, and
of then leaving the act which has been performed to be explained by
antecedents of which it has really been the cause?
[Sidenote: Illustration from deliberation.]
If we question ourselves carefully, we shall see that we sometimes
weigh motives and deliberate over them, when our mind is already
made up. An inner voice, hardly perceivable, whispers: "Why this
deliberation? You know the result and you are quite certain of what
you are going to do." But no matter! it seems that we make a point
of safe-guarding the principle of mechanism and of conforming to the
laws of the association of ideas. The abrupt intervention of the will
is a kind of _coup d'état_ which our mind foresees and which it tries
to legitimate beforehand by a formal deliberation. True, it could be
asked whether the will, even when it wills for willing's sake, does
not obey some decisive reason, and whether willing for willing's sake
is free willing. We shall not insist on this point for the moment.
It will be enough for us to have shown that, even when adopting the
point of view of associationism, it is difficult to maintain that an
act is absolutely determined by its motive and our conscious states
by one another. Beneath these deceptive appearances a more attentive
psychology sometimes reveals to us effects which precede their causes,
and phenomena of psychic attraction which elude the known laws of the
association of ideas. But the time has come to ask whether the very
point of view which associationism adopts does not involve a defective
conception of the self and of the multiplicity of conscious states.
[Sidenote: Associationism involves a defective conception of the self.]
Associationist determinism represents the self as a collection
of psychic states, the strongest of which exerts a prevailing
influence and carries the others with it. This doctrine thus sharply
distinguishes co-existing psychic phenomena from one another. "I could
have abstained from murder," says Stuart Mill, "if my aversion to
the crime and my dread of its consequences had been weaker than the
temptation which impelled me to commit it."[2] And a little further
on: "His desire to do right and his aversion to doing wrong are
strong enough to overcome ... any other desire or aversion which may
conflict with them."[3] Thus desire, aversion, fear, temptation are
here presented as distinct things which there is no inconvenience in
naming separately. Even when he connects these states with the self
which experiences them, the English philosopher still insists on
setting up clear-cut distinctions: "The conflict is between me and
myself; between (for instance) me desiring a pleasure and me dreading
self-reproach."[4] Bain, for his part, devotes a whole chapter to the
"Conflict of Motives."[5] In it he balances pleasures and pains as so
many terms to which one might attribute, at least by abstraction, an
existence of their own. Note that the opponents of determinism agree
to follow it into this field. They too speak of associations of ideas
and conflicts of motives, and one of the ablest of these philosophers,
Alfred Fouillée, goes so far as to make the idea of freedom itself a
motive capable of counterbalancing others.[6] Here, however, lies the
danger. Both parties commit themselves to a confusion which arises from
language, and which is due to the fact that language is not meant to
convey all the delicate shades of inner states.
[Sidenote: This erroneous tendency aided by language. Illustration.]
I rise, for example, to open the window, and I have hardly stood up
before I forget what I had to do.--All right, it will be said; you
have associated two ideas, that of an end to be attained and that of a
movement to be accomplished: one of the ideas has vanished and only the
idea of the movement remains.--However, I do not sit down again; I have
a confused feeling that something remains to be done. This particular
standing still, therefore, is not the same as any other standing still;
in the position which I take up the act to be performed is as it were
prefigured, so that I have only to keep this position, to study it,
or rather to feel it intimately, in order to recover the idea which
had vanished for a moment. Hence, this idea must have tinged with a
certain particular colouring the mental image of the intended movement
and the position taken up, and this colouring, without doubt, would
not have been the same if the end to be attained had been different.
Nevertheless language would have still expressed the movement and the
position in the same way; and associationism would have distinguished
the two cases by saying that with the idea of the same movement there
was associated this time the idea of a new end: as if the mere newness
of the end to be attained did not alter in some degree the idea of the
movement to be performed, even though the movement itself remained the
same! We should thus say, not that the image of a certain position
can be connected in consciousness with images of different ends to be
attained, but rather that positions geometrically identical outside
look different to consciousness from the inside, according to the end
contemplated. The mistake of associationism is that it first did away
with the qualitative element in the act to be performed and retained
only the geometrical and impersonal element: with the idea of this
act, thus rendered colourless, it was then necessary to associate
some specific difference to distinguish it from many other acts. But
this association is the work of the associationist philosopher who is
studying my mind, rather than of my mind itself.
[Sidenote: Illustration from "associations" of smell.]
I smell a rose and immediately confused recollections of childhood come
back to my memory. In truth, these recollections have not been called
up by the perfume of the rose: I breathe them in with the very scent;
it means all that to me. To others it will smell differently.--It is
always the same scent, you will say, but associated with different
ideas.--I am quite willing that you should express yourself in this
way; but do not forget that you have first removed the personal
element from the different impressions which the rose makes on each
one of us; you have retained only the objective aspect, that part of
the scent of the rose which is public property and thereby belongs
to space. Only thus was it possible to give a name to the rose and
its perfume. You then found it necessary, in order to distinguish our
personal impressions from one another, to add specific characteristics
to the general idea of rose-scent. And you now say that our different
impressions, our personal impressions, result from the fact that we
associate different recollections with rose-scent. But the association
of which you speak hardly exists except for you, and as a method of
explanation. It is in this way that, by setting side by side certain
letters of an alphabet common to a number of known languages, we may
imitate fairly well such and such a characteristic sound belonging to a
new one; but not with any of these letters, nor with all of them, has
the sound itself been built up.
[Sidenote: Associationism fails to distinguish between the multiplicity
of juxtaposition and that of fusion.]
We are thus brought back to the distinction which we set up above
between the multiplicity of juxtaposition and that of fusion or
interpenetration. Such and such a feeling such and such an idea,
contains an indefinite plurality of conscious states: but the plurality
will not be observed unless it is, as it were, spread out in this
homogeneous medium which some call duration, but which is in reality
space. We shall then perceive terms external to one another, and these
terms will no longer be the states of consciousness themselves, but
their symbols, or, speaking more exactly, the words which express
them. There is, as we have pointed out, a close connexion between the
faculty of conceiving a homogeneous medium, such as space, and that
of thinking by means of general ideas. As soon as we try to give an
account of a conscious state, to analyse it, this state, which is above
all personal, will be resolved into impersonal elements external to one
another, each of which calls up the idea of a genus and is expressed
by a word. But because our reason, equipped with the idea of space
and the power of creating symbols, draws these multiple elements out
of the whole, it does not follow that they were contained in it. For
within the whole they did not occupy space and did not care to express
themselves by means of symbols; they permeated and melted into one
another. Associationism thus makes the mistake of constantly replacing
the concrete phenomenon which takes place in the mind by the artificial
reconstruction of it given by philosophy, and of thus confusing the
explanation of the fact with the fact itself. We shall perceive this
more clearly as we consider deeper and more comprehensive psychic
states.
[Sidenote: Failure of associationism to explain the deeper states of
the self.]
The self comes into contact with the external world at its surface;
and as this surface retains the imprint of objects, the self will
associate by contiguity terms which it has perceived in juxtaposition:
it is connexions of this kind, connexions of quite simple and so to
speak impersonal sensations, that the associationist theory fits. But,
just in proportion as we dig below the surface and get down to the real
self, do its states of consciousness cease to stand in juxtaposition
and begin to permeate and melt into one another, and each to be tinged
with the colouring of all the others. Thus each of us has his own way
of loving and hating; and this love or this hatred reflects his whole
personality. Language, however, denotes these states by the same words
in every case: so that it has been able to fix only the objective and
impersonal aspect of love, hate, and the thousand emotions which stir
the soul. We estimate the talent of a novelist by the power with which
he lifts out of the common domain, to which language had thus brought
them down, feelings and ideas to which he strives to restore, by adding
detail to detail, their original and living individuality. But just as
we can go on inserting points between two positions of a moving body
without ever filling up the space traversed, in the same way, by the
mere fact that we associate states with states and that these states
are set side by side instead of permeating one another, we fail to
translate completely what our soul experiences: there is no common
measure between mind and language.
[Sidenote: The self is not an aggregate of conscious states. Freedom
is self-expression, admitting of degrees, and may be curtailed by
education.]
Therefore, it is only an inaccurate psychology, misled by language,
which will show us the soul determined by sympathy, aversion, or hate
as though by so many forces pressing upon it. These feelings, provided
that they go deep enough, each make up the whole soul, since the whole
content of the soul is reflected in each of them. To say that the soul
is determined under the influence of any one of these feelings is thus
to recognize that it is self-determined. The associationist reduces the
self to an aggregate of conscious states: sensations, feelings, and
ideas. But if he sees in these various states no more than is expressed
in their name, if he retains only their impersonal aspect, he may set
them side by side for ever without getting anything but a phantom
self, the shadow of the ego projecting itself into space. If, on the
contrary, he takes these psychic states with the particular colouring
which they assume in the case of a definite person, and which comes
to each of them by reflection from all the others, then there is no
need to associate a number of conscious states in order to rebuild the
person, for the whole personality is in a single one of them, provided
that we know how to choose it. And the outward manifestation of this
inner state will be just what is called a free act, since the self
alone will have been the author of it, and since it will express the
whole of the self. Freedom, thus understood, is not _absolute,_ as a
radically libertarian philosophy would have it; it admits of degrees.
For it is by no means the case that all conscious states blend with
one another as raindrops with the water of a lake. The self, in so
far as it has to do with a homogeneous space, develops on a kind of
surface, and on this surface independent growths may form and float.
Thus a suggestion received in the hypnotic state is not incorporated in
the mass of conscious states, but, endowed with a life of its own, it
will usurp the whole personality when its time comes. A violent anger
roused by some accidental circumstance, an hereditary vice suddenly
emerging from the obscure depths of the organism to the surface of
consciousness, will act almost like a hypnotic suggestion. Alongside
these independent elements there may be found more complex series,
the terms of which do permeate one another, but which never succeed
in blending perfectly with the whole mass of the self. Such is the
system of feelings and ideas which are the result of an education not
properly assimilated, an education which appeals to the memory rather
than to the judgment. Here will be found, within the fundamental self,
a parasitic self which continually encroaches upon the other. Many
live this kind of life, and die without having known true freedom.
But suggestion would become persuasion if the entire self assimilated
it; passion, even sudden passion, would no longer bear the stamp of
fatality if the whole history of the person were reflected in it, as
in the indignation of Alceste;[7] and the most authoritative education
would not curtail any of our freedom if it only imparted to us ideas
and feelings capable of impregnating the whole soul. It is the whole
soul, in fact, which gives rise to the free decision: and the act will
be so much the freer the more the dynamic series with which it is
connected tends to be the fundamental self.
[Sidenote: Our every-day acts obey the laws of association. At
great great crises our decisions are really free as expressing the
fundamental self.]
Thus understood, free acts are exceptional, even on the part of those
who are most given to controlling and reasoning out what they do.
It has been pointed out that we generally perceive our own self by
refraction through space, that our conscious states crystallize into
words, and that our living and concrete self thus gets covered with
an outer crust of clean-cut psychic states, which are separated from
one another and consequently fixed. We added that, for the convenience
of language and the promotion of social relations, we have everything
to gain by not breaking through this crust and by assuming it to
give an exact outline of the form of the object which it covers. It
should now be added that our daily actions are called forth not so
much by our feelings themselves, which are constantly changing, as
by the unchanging images with which these feelings are bound up. In
the morning, when the hour strikes at which I am accustomed to rise,
I might receive this impression σὺν ὄλῃ τῇ ψυχῆ, as Plato says; I
might let it blend with the confused mass of impressions which fill
my mind; perhaps in that case it would not determine me to act. But
generally this impression, instead of disturbing my whole consciousness
like a stone which falls into the water of a pond, merely stirs up
an idea which is, so to speak, solidified on the surface, the idea
of rising and attending to my usual occupations. This impression and
this idea have in the end become tied up with one another, so that the
act follows the impression without the self interfering with it. In
this instance I am a conscious automaton, and I am so because I have
everything to gain by being so. It will be found that the majority
of our daily actions are performed in this way and that, owing to
the solidification in memory of such and such sensations, feelings,
or ideas, impressions from the outside call forth movements on our
part which, though conscious and even intelligent, have many points
of resemblance with reflex acts. It is to these acts, which are very
numerous but for the most part insignificant, that the associationist
theory is applicable. They are, taken all together, the substratum
of our free activity, and with respect to this activity they play
the same part as our organic functions in relation to the whole of
our conscious life. Moreover we will grant to determinism that we
often resign our freedom in more serious circumstances, and that, by
sluggishness or indolence, we allow this same local process to run
its course when our whole personality ought, so to speak, to vibrate.
When our most trustworthy friends agree in advising us to take some
important step, the sentiments which they utter with so much insistence
lodge on the surface of our ego and there get solidified in the same
way as the ideas of which we spoke just now. Little by little they
will form a thick crust which will cover up our own sentiments; we
shall believe that we are acting freely, and it is only by looking back
to the past, later on, that we shall see how much we were mistaken.
But then, at the very minute when the act is going to be performed,
_something_ may revolt against it. It is the deep-seated self rushing
up to the surface. It is the outer crust bursting, suddenly giving
way to an irresistible thrust. Hence in the depths of the self, below
this most reasonable pondering over most reasonable pieces of advice,
something else was going on--a gradual heating and a sudden boiling
over of feelings and ideas, not unperceived, but rather unnoticed. If
we turn back to them and carefully scrutinize our memory, we shall
see that we had ourselves shaped these ideas, ourselves lived these
feelings, but that, through some strange reluctance to exercise our
will, we had thrust them back into the darkest depths of our soul
whenever they came up to the surface. And this is why we seek in vain
to explain our sudden change of mind by the visible circumstances
which preceded it. We wish to know the reason why we have made up our
mind, and we find that we have decided without any reason, and perhaps
even against every reason. But, in certain cases, that is the best of
reasons. For the action which has been performed does not then express
some superficial idea, almost external to ourselves, distinct and easy
to account for: it agrees with the whole of our most intimate feelings,
thoughts and aspirations, with that particular conception of life which
is the equivalent of all our past experience, in a word, with our
personal idea of happiness and of honour. Hence it has been a mistake
to look for examples in the ordinary and even indifferent circumstances
of life in order to prove that man is capable of choosing without a
motive. It might easily be shown that these insignificant actions are
bound up with some determining reason. It is at the great and solemn
crisis, decisive of our reputation with others, and yet more with
ourselves, that we choose in defiance of what is conventionally called
a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason is the more striking
the deeper our freedom goes.
[Sidenote: Determinism sets on the one side the ego, always
self-identical and on the other contrary feelings. But this is mere
symbolism.]
But the determinist, even when he refrains from regarding the more
serious emotions or deep-seated psychic states as forces, nevertheless
distinguishes them from one another and is thus led to a mechanical
conception of the self. He will show us this self hesitating between
two contrary feelings, passing from one to the other and finally
deciding in favour of one of them. The self and the feelings which stir
it are thus treated as well defined objects, which remain identical
during the whole of the process. But if it is always the same self
which deliberates, and if the two opposite feelings by which it is
moved do not change, how, in virtue of this very principle of causality
which determinism appeals to, will the self ever come to a decision?
The truth is that the self, by the mere fact of experiencing the
first feeling, has already changed to a slight extent when the second
supervenes: all the time that the deliberation is going on, the self is
changing and is consequently modifying the two feelings which agitate
it. A dynamic series of states is thus formed which permeate and
strengthen one another, and which will lead by a natural evolution to a
free act. But determinism, ever craving for symbolical representation,
cannot help substituting words for the opposite feelings which share
the ego between them, as well as for the ego itself. By giving first
the person and then the feelings by which he is moved a fixed form
by means of sharply defined words, it deprives them in advance of
every kind of living activity. It will then see on the one side
an ego always self-identical, and on the other contrary feelings,
also self-identical, which dispute for its possession; victory will
necessarily belong to the stronger. But this mechanism, to which we
have condemned ourselves in advance, has no value beyond that of a
symbolical representation: it cannot hold good against the witness of
an attentive consciousness, which shows us inner dynamism as a fact.
[Sidenote: Freedom and character. The determinist next asks, could your
act have been different or can it be foretold?]
In short, we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality,
when they express it, when that indefinable resemblance to it which
one sometimes finds between the artist and his work. It is no use
asserting that we are then yielding to the all-powerful influence of
our character. Our character is still ourselves; and because we are
pleased to split the person into two parts so that by an effort of
abstraction we may consider in turn the self which feels or thinks
and the self which acts, it would be very strange to conclude that
one of the two selves is coercing the other. Those who ask whether
we are free to alter our character lay themselves open to the same
objection. Certainly our character is altering imperceptibly every day,
and our freedom would suffer if these new acquisitions were grafted
on to our self and not blended with it. But, as soon as this blending
takes place, it must be admitted that the change which has supervened
in our character belongs to us, that we have appropriated it. In a
word, if it is agreed to call every act free which springs from the
self and from the self alone, the act which bears the mark of our
personality is truly free, for our self alone will lay claim to its
paternity. It would thus be recognized that free will is a fact, if it
were agreed to look for it in a certain characteristic of the decision
which is taken, in the free act itself. But the determinist feeling
that he cannot retain his hold on this position, takes refuge in the
past or the future. Sometimes he transfers himself in thought to some
earlier period and asserts the necessary determination, from this very
moment, of the act which is to come; sometimes, assuming in advance
that the act is already performed, he claims that it could not have
taken place in any other way. The opponents of determinism themselves
willingly follow it on to this new ground and agree to introduce into
their definition of our free act -perhaps not without some risk--the
anticipation of what we might do and the recollection of some other
decision which we might have taken. It is advisable, then, that we
should place ourselves at this new point of view, and, setting aside
all translation into words, all symbolism in space, attend to what pure
consciousness alone shows us about an action that has come to pass or
an action which is still to come. The original error of determinism and
the mistake of its opponents will thus be grasped on another side, in
so far as they bear explicitly on a certain misconception of duration.
[Sidenote: Determinist and libertarian doctrines of possible acts.]
"To be conscious of free will," says Stuart Mill, "must mean to be
conscious, before I have decided, that I am able to decide either
way.[8] This is really the way in which the defenders of free will
understand it; and they assert that when we perform an action freely,
some other action would have been "equally possible." On this point
they appeal to the testimony of consciousness, which shows us, beyond
the act itself, the power of deciding in favour of the opposite
course. Inversely, determinism claims that, given certain antecedents,
only one resultant action was possible. "When we think of ourselves
hypothetically," Stuart Mill goes on, "as having acted otherwise
than we did, we always suppose a difference in the antecedents. We
picture ourselves as having known something that we did not know,
or not known something that we did know."[9] And, faithful to his
principle, the English philosopher assigns consciousness the rôle of
informing us about what is, not about what might be. We shall not
insist for the moment on this last point: we reserve the question
in what sense the ego perceives itself as a determining cause. But
beside this psychological question there is another, belonging rather
to metaphysics, which the determinists and their opponents solve _a
priori_ along opposite lines. The argument of the former implies that
there is only one possible act corresponding to given antecedents: the
believers in free will assume, on the other hand, that the same series
could issue in several different acts, equally possible. It is on this
question of the equal possibility of two contrary actions or volitions
that we shall first dwell: perhaps we shall thus gather some indication
as to the nature of the operation by which the will makes its choice.
[Sidenote: Geometrical (and thereby deceptive) representation of the
process of coming to a decision.]
I hesitate between two possible actions X and Y, and I go in turn from
one to the other. This means that I pass through a series of states,
and that these states can be divided into two groups according as I
incline more towards X or in the contrary direction. Indeed, these
opposite inclinations alone have a real existence, and X and Y are two
symbols by which I represent at their arrival-or termination-points,
so to speak, two different tendencies of my personality at successive
moments of duration. Let us then rather denote the tendencies
themselves by X and Y; will this new notation give a more faithful
image of the concrete reality? It must be noticed, as we said above,
that the self grows, expands, and changes as it passes through the
two contrary states: if not, how would it ever come to a decision?
Hence there are not exactly two contrary states, but a large number
of successive and different states within which I distinguish, by an
effort of imagination, two opposite directions.
[Illustration]
Thus we shall get still nearer the reality by agreeing to use the
invariable signs X and Y to denote, not these tendencies or states
themselves, since they are constantly changing, but the two different
directions which our imagination ascribes to them for the greater
convenience of language. It will also be understood that these
are symbolical representations, that in reality there are not two
tendencies, or even two directions, but a self which lives and develops
by means of its very hesitations, until the free action drops from it
like an over-ripe fruit.
[Sidenote: The only reality is the living developing self, in which we
distinguish by abstraction two opposite tendencies or directions.]
But this conception of voluntary activity does not satisfy common
sense, because, being essentially a devotee of mechanism, it loves
clear-cut distinctions, those which are expressed by sharply defined
words or by different positions in space. Hence it will picture a self
which, after having traversed a series M O of conscious states, when it
reaches the point O finds before it two directions O X and O Y, equally
open. These directions thus become _things,_ real paths into which the
highroad of consciousness leads, and it depends only on the self which
of them is entered upon. In short, the continuous and living activity
of this self, in which we have distinguished, by abstraction only,
two opposite directions, is replaced by these directions themselves,
transformed into indifferent inert things awaiting our choice. But
then we must certainly transfer the activity of the self somewhere or
other. We will put it, according to this hypothesis, at the point O: we
will say that the self, when it reaches O and finds two courses open
to it, hesitates, deliberates and finally decides in favour of one of
them. As we find it difficult to picture the double direction of the
conscious activity in all the phases of its continuous development, we
separate off these two tendencies on the one hand and the activity of
the self on the other: we thus get an impartially active ego hesitating
between two inert and, as it were, solidified courses of action.
Now, if it decides in favour of O X, the line O Y will nevertheless
remain; if it chooses O Y, the path O X will remain open, waiting in
case the self retraces its steps in order to make use of it. It is in
this sense that we say, when speaking of a free act, that the contrary
action was equally possible. And, even if we do not draw a geometrical
figure on paper, we involuntarily and almost unconsciously think of
it as soon as we distinguish in the free act a number of successive
phases, the _conception_ of opposite motives, _hesitation_ and
_choice_--thus hiding the geometrical symbolism under a kind of verbal
crystallization. Now it is easy to see that this really mechanical
conception of freedom issues naturally and logically in the most
unbending determinism.
[Sidenote: If this symbolism represents the facts, the activity of the
self has always tended in one direction, and determinism results.]
The living activity of the self, in which we distinguish by abstraction
two opposite tendencies, will finally issue either at X or Y. Now,
since it is agreed to localize the double activity of the self at the
point O, there is no reason to separate this activity from the act
in which it will issue and which forms part and parcel of it. And if
experience shows that the decision has been in favour of X, it is
not a neutral activity which should be placed at the point O, but an
activity tending in advance in the direction O X, in spite of apparent
hesitations. If, on the contrary, observation proves that the decision
has been in favour of Y, we must infer that the activity localized
by us at the point O was bent in this second direction in spite of
some oscillations towards the first. To assert that the self, when
it reaches the point O, chooses indifferently between X and Y, is to
stop half way in the course of our geometrical symbolism; it is to
separate off at the point O only a part of this continuous activity
in which we undoubtedly distinguished two different directions, but
which in addition has gone on to X or Y: why not take this last fact
into account as well as the other two? Why not assign it the place that
belongs to it in the symbolical figure which we have just constructed?
But if the self, when it reaches the point O, is already determined
in one direction, there is no use in the other way remaining open,
the self cannot take it. And the same rough symbolism which was meant
to show the contingency of the action performed, ends, by a natural
extension, in proving its absolute necessity.
[Sidenote: Libertarians ignore the fact that one path has been chosen,
and not the other.]
In short, defenders and opponents of free will agree in holding that
the action is preceded by a kind of mechanical oscillation between two
points X and Y. If I decide in favour of X, the former will tell me:
you hesitated and deliberated, therefore Y was possible. The others
will answer: you chose X, therefore you had some reason for doing
so, and those who declare that Y was equally possible forget this
reason: they leave aside one of the conditions of the problem. Now,
if I dig deeper underneath these two opposite solutions, I discover a
common postulate: both take up their position after the action X has
been performed, and represent the process of my voluntary activity
by a path M O which branches off at the point O, the lines O X and
O Y symbolizing the two directions which abstraction distinguishes
within the continuous activity of which X is the goal. But while the
determinists take account of all that they know, and note that the
path M O X has been traversed, their opponents mean to ignore one of
the data with which they have constructed the figure, and after having
traced out the lines O X and O Y, which should together represent the
progress of the activity of the self, they bring back the self to the
point O to oscillate there until further orders.
[Sidenote: But the figure merely gives the stereotyped memory of the
process, and not the dynamic progress which issued in the set.]
It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the figure, which is really
a splitting of our psychic activity in space, is purely symbolical,
and as such, cannot be constructed unless we adopt the hypothesis
that our deliberation is finished and our mind made up. If you trace
it beforehand, act you assume that you have reached the end and are
present in imagination at the final act. In short this figure does not
show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done. Do not ask
me then whether the self, having traversed the path M O and decided
in favour of X, could or could not choose Y: I should answer that the
question is meaningless, because there is no line M O, no point O, no
path O X, no direction O Y. To ask such a question is to admit the
possibility of adequately representing time by space and a succession
by a simultaneity. It is to ascribe to the figure we have traced the
value of a description, and not merely of a symbol; it is to believe
that it is possible to follow the process of psychic activity on this
figure like the march of an army on a map. We have been present at the
deliberation of the self in all its phases until the act was performed:
then, recapitulating the terms of the series, we perceive succession
under the form of simultaneity, we project time into space, and we
base our reasoning, consciously or unconsciously, on this geometrical
figure. But this figure represents a _thing_ and not a _progress_; it
corresponds, in its inertness, to a kind of stereotyped memory of the
whole process of deliberation and the final decision arrived at: how
could it give us the least idea of the concrete movement, the dynamic
progress by which the deliberation issued in the act? And yet, once
the figure is constructed, we go back in imagination into the past and
will have it that our psychic activity has followed exactly the path
traced out by the figure. We thus fall into the mistake which has been
pointed out above: we give a mechanical explanation of a fact, and
then substitute the explanation for the fact itself. Hence we encounter
insuperable difficulties from the very beginning: if the two courses
were equally possible, how have we made our choice? If only one of them
was possible, why did we believe ourselves free? And we do not see that
both questions come back to this: Is time space?
[Sidenote: Fundamental error is confusion of time and space. The self
infallible in affirming immediate experience of freedom, but cannot
explain it.]
If I glance over a road marked on the map and follow it up to a
certain point, there is nothing to prevent my turning back and trying
to find out whether it branches off anywhere. But time is not a line
along which one can pass again. Certainly, once it has elapsed, we
are justified in picturing the successive moments as external to one
another and in thus thinking of a line traversing space; but it must
then be understood that this line does not symbolize the time which
is passing but the time which has passed. Defenders and opponents of
free will alike forget this--the former when they assert, and the
latter when they deny the possibility of acting differently from what
we have done. The former reason thus: "The path is not yet traced out,
therefore it may take any direction whatever." To which the answer is:
"You forget that it is not possible to speak of a path till the action
is performed: but then it will have been traced out." The latter say:
"The path has been traced out in such and such a way: therefore its
possible direction was not any direction whatever, but only this one
direction." To which the answer is: "Before the path was traced out
there was no direction, either possible or impossible, for the very
simple reason that there could not yet be any question of a path." Get
rid of this clumsy symbolism, the idea of which besets you without your
knowing it; you will see that the argument of the determinists assumes
this puerile form: "The act, once performed, is performed," and that
their opponents reply: "The act, before being performed, was not yet
performed." In other words, the question of freedom remains after this
discussion exactly where it was to begin with; nor must we be surprised
at it, since freedom must be sought in a certain shade or quality of
the action itself and not in the relation of this act to what it is
not or to what it might have been. All the difficulty arises from the
fact that both parties picture the deliberation under the form of an
oscillation in space, while it really consists in a dynamic progress
in which the self and its motives, like real living beings, are in a
constant state of becoming. The self, infallible when it affirms its
immediate experiences, feels itself free and says so; but, as soon
as it tries to explain its freedom to itself, it no longer perceives
itself except by a kind of refraction through space. Hence a symbolism
of a mechanical kind, equally incapable of proving, disproving, or
illustrating free will.
[Sidenote: Is prediction of an act possible? Probable and infallible
conclusions.]
But determinism will not admit itself beaten, and, putting the question
in a new form, it will say: "Let us leave aside actions already
performed: let us consider only actions that are to come. The question
is whether, knowing from now onwards all the future antecedents,
some higher intelligence would not be able to predict with absolute
certainty the decision which will result."--We gladly agree to the
question being put in these terms: it will give us a chance of stating
our own theory with greater precision. But we shall first draw a
distinction between those who think that the knowledge of antecedents
would enable us to state a _probable_ conclusion and those who speak of
an _infallible_ foresight. To say that a certain friend, under certain
circumstances, will very probably act in a certain way, is not so much
to predict the future conduct of our friend as to pass a judgment
on his present character, that is to say, on his past. Although our
feelings, our ideas, our character, are constantly altering, a sudden
change is seldom observed; and it is still more seldom that we cannot
say of a person whom we know that certain actions seem to accord
fairly well with his nature and that certain others are absolutely
inconsistent with it. All philosophers will agree on this point; for
to say that a given action is consistent or inconsistent with the
present character of a person whom one knows is not to bind the future
to the present. But the determinist goes much further: he asserts
that our solution is provisional simply because we never know all the
conditions of the problem: that our forecast would gain in probability
in proportion as we were provided with a larger number of these
conditions; that, therefore, complete and perfect knowledge of all the
antecedents without any exception would make our forecast infallibly
true. Such, then, is the hypothesis which we have to examine.
[Sidenote: To know _completely_ the antecedents and conditions of an
action is to be actually performing it.]
For the sake of greater definiteness, let us imagine a person called
upon to make a seemingly free decision under serious circumstances:
we shall call him Peter. The question is whether a philosopher Paul,
living at the same period as Peter, or, if you prefer, a few centuries
before, would have been able, knowing _all_ the conditions under which
Peter acts, to foretell with certainty the choice which Peter made.
There are several ways of picturing the mental condition of a person at
a given moment. We try to do it when e.g. we read a novel; but whatever
care the author may have taken in depicting the feelings of his hero,
and even in tracing back his history, the end, foreseen or unforeseen,
will add something to the idea which we had formed of the character:
the character, therefore, was only imperfectly known to us. In truth,
the deeper psychic states, those which are translated by free acts,
express and sum up the whole of our past history: if Paul knows all
the conditions under which Peter acts, we must suppose that no detail
of Peter's life escapes him, and that his imagination reconstructs and
even lives over again Peter's history. But we must here make a vital
distinction. When I myself pass through a certain psychic state, I know
exactly the intensity of this state and its importance in relation to
the others, not by measurement or comparison, but because the intensity
of e.g. a deep-seated feeling is nothing else than the feeling itself.
On the other hand, if I try to give you an account of this psychic
state, I shall be unable to make you realize its intensity except by
some definite sign of a mathematical kind: I shall have to measure its
importance, compare it with what goes before and what follows, in
short determine the part which it plays in the final act. And I shall
say that it is more or less intense, more or less important, according
as the final act is explained by it or apart from it. On the other
hand, for my own consciousness, which perceived this inner state, there
was no need of a comparison of this kind: the intensity was given to
it as an inexpressible quality of the state itself. In other words,
the intensity of a psychic state is not given to consciousness as a
special sign accompanying this state and denoting its power, like an
exponent in algebra; we have shown above that it expresses rather its
shade, its characteristic colouring, and that, if it is a question of
a feeling, for example, its intensity consists in being felt. Hence
we have to distinguish two ways of assimilating the conscious states
of other people: the one dynamic, which consists in experiencing them
oneself; the other static, which consists in substituting for the
consciousness of these states their image or rather their intellectual
symbol, their idea. In this case the conscious states are _imagined_
instead of being _reproduced_; but, then, to the image of the psychic
states themselves some indication of their _intensity_ should be added,
since they no longer act on the person in whose mind they are pictured
and the latter has no longer any chance of experiencing their force by
actually feeling them. Now, this indication itself will necessarily
assume a quantitative character: it will be pointed out, for example,
that a certain feeling has more strength than another feeling, that it
is necessary to take more account of it, that it has played a greater
part; and how could this be known unless the later history of the
person were known in advance, with the precise actions in which this
multiplicity of states or inclinations has issued? Therefore, if Paul
is to have an adequate idea of Peter's state at any moment of his
history, there are only two courses open; either, like a novelist who
knows whither he is conducting his characters, Paul must already know
Peter's final act, and must thus be able to supplement his mental image
of the successive states through which Peter is going to pass by some
indication of their value in relation to the whole of Peter's history;
or he must make up his mind to pass through these different states,
not in imagination, but in reality. The former hypothesis must be put
on one side since the very point at issue is whether, the antecedents
_alone_ being given, Paul will be able to foresee the final act. We
find ourselves compelled, therefore, to alter radically the idea
which we had formed of Paul: he is not, as we had thought at first, a
spectator whose eyes pierce the future, but an actor who plays Peter's
part in advance. And notice that you cannot exempt him from any detail
of this part, for the most common-place events have their importance in
a life-story; and even supposing that they have not, you cannot decide
that they are insignificant except in relation to the final act,
which, by hypothesis, is not given. Neither have you the right to cut
short--were it only by a second--the different states of consciousness
through which Paul is going to pass before Peter; for the effects of
the same feeling, for example, go on accumulating at every moment of
duration, and the sum total of these effects could not be realized all
at once unless one knew the importance of the feeling, taken in its
totality, in relation to the final act, which is the very thing that is
supposed to remain unknown. But if Peter and Paul have experienced the
same feelings in the same order, if their minds have the same history,
how will you distinguish one from the other? Will it be by the body in
which they dwell? They would then always differ in some respect, viz.,
that at no moment of their history would they have a mental picture
of the same body. Will it be by the place which they occupy in time?
In that case they would no longer be present at the same events: now,
by hypothesis, they have the same past and the same present, having
the same experience. You must now make up your mind about it: Peter
and Paul are one and the same person, whom you call Peter when he acts
and Paul when you recapitulate his history. The more complete you
made the sum of the conditions which, when known, would have enabled
you to predict Peter's future action, the closer became your grasp of
his existence and the nearer you came to living his life over again
down to its smallest details: you thus reached the very moment when,
the action taking place, there was no longer anything to be foreseen,
but only something to be done. Here again any attempt to reconstruct
ideally an act really _willed_ ends in the mere witnessing of the act
whilst it is being performed or when it is already done.
[Sidenote: Hence meaningless to ask whether an act can be foreseen when
_all_ its antecedents are given.]
Hence it is a question devoid of meaning to ask: Could or could not
the act be foreseen, given the sum total of its antecedents? For there
are two ways of assimilating these antecedents, the one dynamic the
other static. In the first case we shall be led by imperceptible steps
to identify ourselves with the person we are dealing with, to pass
through the same series of states, and thus to get back to the very
moment at which the act is performed; hence there can no longer be any
question of foreseeing it. In the second case, we presuppose the final
act by the mere fact of annexing to the qualitative description of the
previous states the quantitative appreciation of their importance.
Here again the one party is led merely to realize that the act is not
yet performed when it is to be performed, and the other, that when
performed it is performed. This, like the previous discussion, leaves
the question of freedom exactly where it was to begin with.
[Sidenote: The two fallacies involved: (1) regarding intensity as a
magnitude, not a quality; (2) substituting material symbol for dynamic
process.]
By going deeper into this twofold argument, we shall find, at its very
root, the two fundamental illusions of the reflective consciousness.
The first consists in regarding: intensity as a mathematical property
of psychic states and not, as we said at the beginning of this essay,
as a special quality, as a particular shade of these various states.
The second consists in substituting for the concrete reality or dynamic
progress, which consciousness perceives, the material symbol of this
progress when it has already reached its end, that is to say, of the
act already accomplished together with the series of its antecedents.
Certainly, once the final act is completed, I can ascribe to all the
antecedents their proper value, and picture the interplay of these
various elements as a conflict or a composition of forces. But to ask
whether, the antecedents being known as well as their value, one could
foretell the final act, is to beg the question; it is to forget that
we cannot know the value of the antecedents without knowing the final
act, which is the very thing that is not yet known; it is to suppose
wrongly that the symbolical diagram which we draw in our own way for
representing the action _when completed_ has been drawn by the action
itself _whilst progressing,_ and drawn by it in an automatic manner.
[Sidenote: Claiming to foresee an action always comes back to confusing
time with space.]