you will see that the question whether the act could or could not
be foreseen always comes back to this: Is time space? You begin by
setting side by side in some ideal space the conscious states which
succeed one another in Peter's mind, and you perceive his life as a
kind of path M O X Y traced out by a moving body M in space. You then
blot out in thought the part O X Y of this curve, and you inquire
whether, knowing M O, you would have been able to determine the portion
O X of the curve which the moving body describes beyond O.
[Illustration]
Such is, in the main, the question which you put when you bring in a
philosopher Paul, who lives before Peter and has to picture to himself
the conditions under which Peter will act. You thus materialize these
conditions; you make the time to come into a road already marked
out across the plain, which we can contemplate from the top of the
mountain, even if we have not traversed it and are never to do so.
But, now, you soon notice that the knowledge of the part M O of the
curve would not be enough, unless you were shown the position of the
points of this line, not only in relation to one another, but also in
relation to the points of the whole line M O X Y; which would amount to
being given in advance the very elements which have to be determined.
So you then alter your hypothesis; you realize that time does not
require to be seen, but to be lived; and hence you conclude that, if
your knowledge of the line M O was not a sufficient datum, the reason
must have been that you looked at it from the outside instead of
identifying yourself with the point M, which describes not only M O but
also the whole curve, and thus making its movement your own. Therefore,
you persuade Paul to come and coincide with Peter; and naturally,
then, it is the line M O X Y which Paul traces out in space, since, by
hypothesis, Peter describes this line. But in no wise do you prove thus
that Paul foresaw Peter's action; you only show that Peter acted in
the way he did, since Paul became Peter. It is true that you then come
back, unwittingly, to your former hypothesis, because you continually
confuse the line M O X Y in its tracing with the line M O X Y already
traced, that is to say, time with space. After causing Paul to come
down and identify himself with Peter as long as was required, you let
him go up again and resume his former post of observation. No wonder if
he then perceives the line M O X Y complete: he himself has just been
completing it.
[Sidenote: Confusion arising from prediction of astronomical phenomena.]
What makes the confusion a natural and almost an unavoidable one is
that science seems to point to many cases where we do anticipate the
future. Do we not determine beforehand the conjunctions of heavenly
bodies, solar and lunar eclipses, in short the greater number of
astronomical phenomena? Does not, then, the human intellect embrace
in the present moment immense intervals of duration still to come? No
doubt it does; but an anticipation of this kind has not the slightest
resemblance to the anticipation of a voluntary act. Indeed, as we shall
see, the reasons which render it possible to foretell an astronomical
phenomenon are the very ones which prevent us from determining in
advance an act which springs from our free activity. For the future of
the material universe, although contemporaneous with the future of a
conscious being, has no analogy to it.
[Sidenote: Illustration from hypothetical acceleration of physical
movements.]
In order to put our finger on this vital difference, let us assume
for a moment that some mischievous illustration genius, more powerful
still than the mischievous genius conjured up by Descartes decreed
that all the movements of the universe should go twice as fast. There
would be no change in astronomical phenomena, or at any rate in the
equations which enable us to foresee them, for in these equations the
symbol _t_ does not stand for a duration, but for a relation between
two durations, for a certain number of units of time, in short, for
a certain number of _simultaneities:_ these simultaneities, these
coincidences would still take place in equal number: only the intervals
which separate them would have diminished, but these intervals never
make their appearance in our calculations. Now these intervals are just
duration _lived,_ duration which our consciousness perceives, and our
consciousness would soon inform us of a shortening of the day if we
had not experienced the usual amount of duration between sunrise and
sunset. No doubt it would not measure this shortening, and perhaps it
would not even perceive it immediately as a change of quantity; but it
would realize in some way or other a decline in the usual storing up
of experience, a change in the progress usually accomplished between
sunrise and sunset.
[Sidenote: Astronomical prophecy such as acceleration.]
Now, when an astronomer foretells e.g. a lunar eclipse, he merely
exercises in his own way the power which we have ascribed to our
mischievous genius. He decrees that time shall go ten times, a hundred
times, a thousand times as fast, and he has a right to do so, since
all that he thus changes is the nature of the conscious intervals,
and since these intervals, by hypothesis, do not enter into the
calculations. Therefore, into a psychological duration of a few seconds
he may put several years, even several centuries of astronomical
time: that is his procedure when he traces in advance the path of a
heavenly body or represents it by an equation. What he does is nothing
but establishing a series of relations of position between this body
and other given bodies, a series of simultaneities and coincidences,
a series of numerical relations: as for duration properly so called,
it remains outside the calculation and could only be perceived by a
consciousness capable of living through the intervals and, in fact,
living the intervals themselves, instead of merely perceiving their
extremities. Indeed it is even conceivable that this consciousness
could live so slow and lazy a life as to take in the whole path of the
heavenly body in a single perception, just as we do when we perceive
the successive positions of a shooting star as one line of fire. Such a
consciousness would find itself really in the same conditions in which
the astronomer places himself ideally; it would see in the present
what the astronomer perceives in the future. In truth, if the latter
foresees a future phenomenon, it is only on condition of making it to a
certain extent a present phenomenon, or at least of enormously reducing
the interval which separates us from it. In short, the time of which
we speak in astronomy is a number, and the nature of the units of this
number cannot be specified in our calculations; we may therefore assume
them to be as small as we please, provided that the same hypothesis is
extended to the whole series of operations, and that the successive
relations of position in space are thus preserved. We shall then be
present in imagination at the phenomenon we wish to foretell; we shall
know exactly at what point in space and after how many units of time
this phenomenon takes place; if we then restore to these units their
psychical nature, we shall thrust the event again into the future and
say that we have foreseen it, when in reality we have seen it.
[Sidenote: In dealing with states of consciousness we cannot vary their
duration without altering their nature.]
But these units of time which make up living duration, and which the
astronomer can dispose of as he pleases because they give no handle
to science, are just what concern the psychologist, for psychology
deals with the intervals themselves and not with their extremities.
Certainly pure consciousness does not perceive time as a sum of units
of duration: left to itself, it has no means and even no reason to
measure time; but a feeling which lasted only half the number of days,
for example, would no longer be the same feeling for it; it would lack
thousands of impressions which gradually thickened its substance and
altered its colour. True, when we give this feeling a certain name,
when we treat it as a thing, we believe that we can diminish its
duration by half, for example, and also halve the duration of all the
rest of our history: it seems that it would still be the same life,
only on a reduced scale. But we forget that states of consciousness
are processes, and not things; that if we denote them each by a single
word, it is for the convenience of language; that they are alive and
therefore constantly changing; that, in consequence, it is impossible
to cut off a moment from them without making them poorer by the loss of
some impression, and thus altering their quality. I quite understand
that the orbit of a planet might be perceived all at once or in a very
short time, because its successive positions or the _results_ of its
movement are the only things that matter, and not the duration of the
equal intervals which separate them. But when we have to do with a
feeling, it has no precise result except its having been felt; and,
to estimate this result adequately, it would be necessary to have
gone through all the phases of the feeling itself and to have taken
up the same duration. Even if this feeling has finally issued in some
definite action, which might be compared to the definite position of
a planet in space, the knowledge of this act will hardly enable us to
estimate the influence of the feeling on the whole of a life-story, and
it is this very influence which we want to know. All foreseeing is in
reality seeing, and this seeing takes place when we can reduce as much
as we please an interval of future time while preserving the relation
of its parts to one another, as happens in the case of astronomical
predictions. But what does reducing an interval of time mean, except
emptying or impoverishing the conscious states which fill it? And does
not the very possibility of seeing an astronomical period in miniature
thus imply the impossibility of modifying a psychological series in the
same way, since it is only by taking this psychological series as an
invariable basis that we shall be able to make an astronomical period
vary arbitrarily as regards the unit of duration?
[Sidenote: Difference between past and future duration in this respect.]
Thus, when we ask whether a future action could have been foreseen, we
unwittingly identify that time with which we have to do in the exact
sciences, and which is reducible to a number, with real duration, whose
so-called quantity is really a quality, and which we cannot curtail
by an instant without altering the nature of the facts which fill it.
No doubt the identification is made easier by the fact that in a large
number of cases we are justified in dealing with real duration as with
astronomical time. Thus, when we call to mind the past, i.e. a series
of deeds done, we always shorten it, without however distorting the
nature of the event which interests us. The reason is that we know
it already; for the psychic state, when it reaches the end of the
_progress_ which constitutes its very existence, becomes a _thing_
which one can picture to oneself all at once. Here we find ourselves
in the same position as the astronomer, when he takes in at a glance
the orbit which a planet will need several years to traverse. In fact,
astronomical prediction should be compared with the recollection of the
past state of consciousness, not with the anticipation of the future
one. But when we have to determine a future state of consciousness,
however superficial it may be, we can no longer view the antecedents in
a static condition as things; we must view them in a dynamic condition
as processes, since we are concerned with their influence alone. Now
their duration is this very influence. Therefore it will no longer do
to shorten future duration in order to picture its parts beforehand;
one is bound to _live_ this duration whilst it is unfolding. As far
as deep-seated psychic states are concerned, there is no perceptible
difference between foreseeing, seeing, and acting.
[Sidenote: The determinist argument that psychic phenomena are subject
to the law "same antecedents, same consequent."]
Only one course will remain open to the determinist. He will probably
give up asserting the possibility of foreseeing a certain future act or
state of consciousness, but will maintain that every act is determined
by its psychic antecedents, or, in other words, that the facts of
consciousness, went, the phenomena of nature, are subject to laws. This
way of arguing means, at bottom, that he will leave out the particular
features of the concrete psychic states, lest he find himself
confronted by phenomena which defy all symbolical representation and
therefore all anticipation. The particular nature of these phenomena
is thus thrust out of sight, but it is asserted that, being phenomena,
they must remain subject to the law of causality. Now, it is argued,
this law means that every phenomenon is determined by its conditions,
or, in other words, that the same causes produce the same effects.
Either, then, the act is inseparably bound to its antecedents, or the
principle of causality admits of an incomprehensible exception.
[Sidenote: But as regards inner states the same antecedents will never
recur.]
This last form of the determinist argument differs less than might be
thought from all the others which have been examined above. To say that
the same inner causes will reproduce the same effects is to assume that
the same cause can appear a second time on the stage of consciousness.
Now, if duration is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are
radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any
two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments
of a life-story. While the external object does not bear the mark of
the time that has elapsed and thus, in spite of the difference of time,
the physicist can again encounter identical elementary conditions,
duration is something real for the consciousness which preserves the
trace of it, and we cannot here speak of identical conditions, because
the same moment does not occur twice. It is no use arguing that, even
if there are no two deep-seated psychic states which are altogether
alike, yet analysis would resolve these different states into more
general and homogeneous elements which might be compared with each
other. This would be to forget that even the simplest psychic elements
possess a personality and a life of their own, however superficial they
may be; they are in a constant state of becoming, and the same feeling,
by the mere fact of being repeated, is a new feeling. Indeed, we have
no reason for calling it by its former name save that it corresponds
to the same external cause or projects itself outwardly into similar
attitudes: hence it would simply be begging the question to deduce from
the so-called likeness of two conscious states that the same cause
produces the same effect. In short, if the causal relation still holds
good in the realm of inner states, it cannot resemble in any way what
we call causality in nature. For the physicist, the same cause always
produces the same effect: for a psychologist who does not let himself
be misled by merely apparent analogies, a deep-seated inner cause
produces its effect once for all and will never reproduce it. And if
it is now asserted that this effect was inseparably bound up with this
particular cause, such an assertion will mean one of two things: either
that, the antecedents being given, the future action might have been
foreseen; or that, the action having once been performed, any other
actionals seen, under the given conditions, to have been impossible.
Now we saw that both these assertions were equally meaningless, and
that they also involved a false conception of duration.
[Sidenote: Analysis of the conception of cause, which underlies the
whole determinist argument.]
Nevertheless it will be worth while to dwell on this latter form of the
determinist argument, even though it be only to explain from our point
of view the meaning of the two words "determination" and "causality."
In vain do we argue that there cannot be any question either of
foreseeing a future action in the way that an astronomical phenomenon
is foreseen, or of asserting, when once an action is done, that any
other action would have been impossible under the given conditions. In
vain do we add that, even when it takes this form: "The same causes
produce the same effects," the principle of universal determination
loses every shred of meaning in the inner world of conscious states.
The determinist will perhaps yield to our arguments on each of these
three points in particular, will admit that in the psychical field one
cannot ascribe any of these three meanings to the word determination,
will probably fail to discover a fourth meaning, and yet will go on
repeating that the act is inseparably bound up with its antecedents. We
thus find ourselves here confronted by so deep-seated a misapprehension
and so obstinate a prejudice that we cannot get the better of them
without attacking them at their root, which is the principle of
causality. By analysing the concept of cause, we shall show the
ambiguity which it involves, and, though not aiming at a formal
definition of freedom, we shall perhaps get beyond the purely negative
idea of it which we have framed up to the present.
[Sidenote: Causality as "regular succession" does not apply to
conscious states and cannot disprove free will.]
We perceive physical phenomena, and these phenomena obey laws. This
means: (i) that phenomena _a, b, c, d,_ previously perceived, can
occur again in the same shape; (2) that a certain phenomenon _P,_
which appeared after the conditions _a, b, c, d,_ and after these
conditions only, will not fail to recur as soon as the same conditions
are again present. If the principle of causality told us nothing
more, as the empiricists claim, we should willingly grant these
philosophers that their principle is derived from experience; but
it would no longer prove anything against our freedom. For it would
then be understood that definite antecedents give rise to a definite
consequent _wherever_ experience shows us this regular succession;
but the question is whether this regularity is found in the domain
of consciousness too, and that is the whole problem of free will. We
grant you for a moment that the principle of causality is nothing but
the summing up of the uniform and unconditional successions observed
in the past: by what right, then, do you apply it to those deep-seated
states of consciousness in which no regular succession has yet been
discovered, since the attempt to foresee them ever fails? And how can
you base on this principle your argument to prove the determinism of
inner states, when, according to you, the determinism of observed
facts is the sole source of the principle itself? In truth, when the
empiricists make use of the principle of causality to disprove human
freedom, they take the word cause in a new meaning, which is the very
meaning given to it by common sense.
To assert the regular succession of two phenomena is, indeed, to
recognize that, the first being given, we already catch sight of the
second. But this wholly subjective connexion between two ideas is not
enough for common sense. It seems to common sense that, if the idea
of the second phenomenon is already implied in that of the first, the
second phenomenon itself must exist objectively, in some way or other,
within the first phenomenon. And common sense was bound to come to
this conclusion, because to distinguish exactly between an objective
connexion of phenomena and a subjective association between their ideas
presupposes a fairly high degree of philosophical culture. We thus pass
imperceptibly from the first meaning to the second, and we picture the
causal relation as a kind of prefiguring of the future phenomenon in
its present conditions. Now this prefiguring can be understood in two
very different ways, and it is just here that the ambiguity begins.
[Sidenote: Causality, as the prefiguring of the future phenomenon in
its present conditions, in one form destroys concrete phenomena.]
In the first place, mathematics furnishes us with _one_ type of
this kind of prefiguring. The very movement by which we draw the
circumference of a circle on a sheet of paper generates all the
mathematical properties of this figure: in this sense an unlimited
number of theorems can be said to pre-exist within the definition,
although they will be spread out in duration for the mathematician
who deduces them. It is true that we are here in the realm of pure
quantity and that, as geometrical properties can be expressed in the
form of equations, it is easy to understand how the original equation,
expressing the fundamental property of the figure, is transformed into
an unlimited number of new ones, all virtually contained in the first.
On the contrary, physical phenomena, which succeed one another and are
perceived by our senses, are distinguished by quality not less than by
quantity, so that there would be some difficulty in at once declaring
them equivalent to one another. But, just because they are perceived
through our sense-organs, we seem justified in ascribing their
qualitative differences to the impression which they make on us and in
assuming, behind the heterogeneity of our sensations, a homogeneous
physical universe. Thus, we shall strip matter of the concrete
qualities with which our senses clothe it, colour, heat, resistance,
even weight, and we shall finally find ourselves confronted with
homogeneous extensity, space without body. The only step then remaining
will be to describe figures in space, to make them move according to
mathematically formulated laws, and to explain the apparent qualities
of matter by the shape, position, and motion of these geometrical
figures. Now, position is given by a system of fixed magnitudes and
motion is expressed by a law, i.e. by a constant relation between
variable magnitudes; but shape is a mental image, and, however tenuous,
however transparent we assume it to be, it still constitutes, in so
far as our imagination has, so to speak, the visual perception of
it, a concrete and therefore irreducible quality of matter. It will
therefore be necessary to make a clean sweep of this image itself and
replace it by the abstract formula of the movement which gives rise
to the figure. Picture then algebraical relations getting entangled
in one another, becoming objective by this very entanglement, and
producing, by the mere effect of their complexity, concrete, visible,
and tangible reality,--you will be merely drawing the consequences
of the principle of causality, understood in the sense of an actual
prefiguring of the future in the present. The scientists of our time do
not seem, indeed, to have carried abstraction so far, except perhaps
Lord Kelvin. This acute and profound physicist assumed that space is
filled with a homogeneous and incompressible fluid in which vortices
move, thus producing the properties of matter: these vortices are the
constituent elements of bodies; the atom thus becomes a movement, and
physical phenomena are reduced to regular movements taking place within
an incompressible fluid. But, if you will notice that this fluid is
perfectly homogeneous, that between its parts there is neither an empty
interval which separates them nor any difference whatever by which
they can be distinguished, you will see that all movement taking place
within this fluid is really equivalent to absolute immobility, since
before, during, and after the movement nothing changes and nothing
has changed in the whole. The movement which is here spoken of is
thus not a movement which actually takes place, but only a movement
which is pictured mentally: it is a relation between relations. It is
implicitly supposed, though perhaps not actually realized, that motion
has something to do with consciousness, that in space there are only
simultaneities, and that the business of the physicist is to provide
us with the means of calculating these relations of simultaneity for
any moment of our duration. Nowhere has mechanism been carried further
than in this system, since the very shape of the ultimate elements of
matter is here reduced to a movement. But the Cartesian physics already
anticipated this interpretation; for if matter is nothing, as Descartes
claimed, but homogeneous extensity, the movements of the parts of this
extensity can be conceived through the abstract law which governs them
or through an algebraical equation between variable magnitudes, but
cannot be represented under the concrete form of an image. And it would
not be difficult to prove that the more the progress of mechanical
explanations enables us to develop this conception of causality and
therefore to relieve the atom of the weight of its sensible qualities,
the more the concrete existence of the phenomena of nature tends to
vanish into algebraical smoke.
[Sidenote: It thus leads to Descartes' physics and Spinoza's
metaphysics, but cannot bind future to present without neglecting
duration.]
Thus understood, the relation of causality is a necessary relation in
the sense that it will indefinitely approach the relation of identity,
as a curve approaches its asymptote. The Principle of identity is the
absolute law of our consciousness: it asserts that what is thought
is thought at the moment when we think it: and what gives this
principle its absolute necessity is that it does not bind the future
to the present, but only the present to the present: it expresses the
unshakable confidence that consciousness feels in itself, so long as,
faithful to its duty, it confines itself to declaring the apparent
present state of the mind. But the principle of causality, in so far
as it is supposed to bind the future to the present, could never take
the form of a necessary principle; for the successive moments of
real time are not bound up with one another, and no effort of logic
will succeed in proving that what has been will be or will continue
to be, that the same antecedents will always give rise to identical
consequents. Descartes understood this so well that he attributed the
regularity of the physical world and the continuation of the same
effects to the constantly renewed grace of Providence; he built up, as
it were, an instantaneous physics, intended for a universe the whole
duration of which might as well be confined to the present moment.
And Spinoza maintained that the indefinite series of phenomena, which
takes for us the form of a succession in time, was equivalent, in the
absolute, to the divine unity: he thus assumed, on the one hand, that
the relation of apparent causality between phenomena melted away into
a relation of identity in the absolute, and, on the other, that the
indefinite duration of things was all contained in a single moment,
which is eternity. In short, whether we study Cartesian physics,
Spinozistic metaphysics, or the scientific theories of our own time,
we shall find everywhere the same anxiety to establish a relation of
logical necessity between cause and effect, and we shall see that this
anxiety shows itself in a tendency to transform relations of succession
into relations of inherence, to do away with active duration, and to
substitute for apparent causality a fundamental identity.
[Sidenote: The necessary determination of phenomena implies
non-duration; but we _endure_ and are therefore free.]
Now, if the development of the notion of causality, understood
in the sense of necessary connexion, leads to the Spinozistic or
Cartesian conception of nature, inversely, all relation of necessary
determination established between successive phenomena may be supposed
to arise from our perceiving, in a confused form, some mathematical
mechanism behind their heterogeneity. We do not claim that common
sense has any intuition of the kinetic theories of matter, still less
perhaps of a Spinozistic mechanism; but it will be seen that the more
the effect seems necessarily bound up with the cause, the more we tend
to put it in the cause itself, as a mathematical consequence in its
principle, and thus to cancel the effect of duration. That under the
influence of the same external conditions I do not behave to-day as I
behaved yesterday is not at all surprising, because I _change,_ because
I _endure._ But things considered apart from our perception do not
seem to endure; and the more thoroughly we examine this idea, the more
absurd it seems to us to suppose that the same cause should not produce
to-day the effect which it produced yesterday. We certainly feel,
it is true, that although things do not endure as we do ourselves,
nevertheless there must be some reason why phenomena are seen to
_succeed_ one another instead of being set out all at once. And this
is why the notion of causality, although it gets indefinitely near
that of identity, will never seem to us to coincide with it, unless we
conceive clearly the idea of a mathematical mechanism or unless some
subtle metaphysics removes our very legitimate scruples on the point.
It is no less obvious that our belief in the necessary determination of
phenomena by one another becomes stronger in proportion as we are more
inclined to regard duration as a subjective form of our consciousness.
In other words, the more we tend to set up the causal relation as a
relation of necessary determination, the more we assert thereby that
things do not _endure_ like ourselves. This amounts to saying that the
more we strengthen the principle of causality, the more we emphasize
the difference between a physical series and a psychical one. Whence,
finally, it would result (however paradoxical the opinion may seem)
that the assumption of a relation of mathematical inherence between
external phenomena ought to bring with it, as a natural or at least as
a plausible consequence, the belief in human free will. But this last
consequence will not concern us for the moment: we are merely trying
here to trace out the first meaning of the word causality, and we
think we have shown that the prefiguring of the future in the present
is easily conceived under a mathematical form, thanks to a certain
conception of duration which, without seeming to be so, is fairly
familiar to common sense.
[Sidenote: Prefiguring, as having an idea of a future act which
we cannot realize without effort, does not involve necessary
determination.]
But there is a prefiguring of another kind, still more familiar to our
mind, because immediate prefiguring, as consciousness gives us the type
of it. We go, in fact, through successive states of consciousness, and
although the later was not contained in the earlier, we had before us
at the time a more or less confused idea of it. The actual realization
of this idea, however, did not appear as certain but merely as
possible. Yet, between the idea and the action, some hardly perceptible
intermediate processes come in, the whole mass of which takes for us a
form _sui generis,_ which is called the feeling of effort. And from the
idea to the effort, from the effort to the act, the progress has been
so continuous that we cannot say where the idea and the effort end,
and where the act begins. Hence we see that in a certain sense we may
still say here that the future was prefigured in the present; but it
must be added that this prefiguring is very imperfect, since the future
action of which we have the present idea is conceived as realizable
but not as realized, and since, even when we plan the effort necessary
to accomplish it, we feel that there is still time to stop. If, then,
we decide to picture the causal relation in this second form, we can
assert _a priori_ that there will no longer be a relation of necessary
determination between the cause and the effect, for the effect will
no longer be given in the cause. It will be there only in the state of
pure possibility and as a vague idea which perhaps will not be followed
by the corresponding action. But we shall not be surprised that this
approximation is enough for common sense if we think of the readiness
with which children and primitive people accept the idea of a whimsical
Nature, in which caprice plays a part no less important than necessity.
Nay, this way of conceiving causality will be more easily understood
by the general run of people, since it does not demand any effort of
abstraction and only implies a certain analogy between the outer and
the inner world, between the succession of objective phenomena and that
of our subjective states.
[Sidenote: This second conception of causality leads to Leibniz as the
first led to Spinoza.]
In truth, this second way of conceiving the relation of cause to effect
is more natural than the first in that it immediately satisfies the
need of a mental image. If we look for the phenomenon B within the
phenomenon A, which regularly precedes it, the reason is that the habit
of associating the two images ends in giving us the idea of the second
phenomenon wrapped up, as it were, in that of the first. It is natural,
then, that we should push this objectification to its furthest limit
and that we should make the phenomenon A itself into a psychic state,
in which the phenomenon B is supposed to be contained as a very vague
idea. We simply suppose, thereby, that the objective connexion of the
two phenomena resembles the subjective association which suggested the
idea of it to us. The qualities of things are thus set up as actual
_states,_ somewhat analogous to those of our own self; the material
universe is credited with a vague personality which is diffused
through space and which, although not exactly endowed with a conscious
will, is led on from one state to another by an inner impulse, a
kind of effort. Such was ancient hylozoism, a half-hearted and even
contradictory hypothesis, which left matter its extensity although
attributing to it real conscious states, and which spread the qualities
of matter throughout extensity while treating these qualities as inner
i.e. simple states. It was reserved for Leibniz to do away with this
contradiction and to show that, if the succession of external qualities
or phenomena is understood as the succession of our own ideas, these
qualities must be regarded as simple states or perceptions, and the
matter which supports them as an unextended monad, analogous to our
soul. But, if such be the case, the successive states of matter cannot
be perceived from the outside any more than our own psychic states;
the hypothesis of pre-established harmony must be introduced in order
to explain how these inner states are representative of one another.
Thus, with our second conception of the relation of causality we reach
Leibniz, as with the first we reached Spinoza. And in both cases we
merely push to their extreme limit or formulate with greater precision
two half-hearted and confused ideas of common sense.
[Sidenote: It does not involve necessary determination.]
Now it is obvious that the relation of causality, understood in this
second way, does not involve the necessary determination of the effect
by the cause. History indeed proves it. We see ancient hylozoism,
the first outcome of this conception of causality, explained the
regular succession of causes and effects by a real _deus ex machina_:
sometimes it was a Necessity external to things and hovering over them,
sometimes an inner Reason acting by rules somewhat similar to those
which govern our own conduct. Nor do the perceptions of Leibniz's monad
necessitate one another; God has to regulate their order in advance.
In fact, Leibniz's determinism does not spring from his conception
of the monad, but from the fact that he builds up the universe with
monads only. Having denied all mechanical influence of substances
on one another, he had to explain how it happens that their states
correspond. Hence a determinism which arises from the necessity of
positing a pre-established harmony, and not at all from the dynamic
conception of the relation of causality. But let us leave history
aside. Consciousness itself testifies that the abstract idea of force
is that of indeterminate effort, that of an effort which has not yet
issued in an act and in which the act is still only at the stage of an
idea. In other words, the dynamic conception of the causal relation
ascribes to things a duration absolutely like our own, whatever may be
the nature of this duration; to picture in this way the relation of
cause to effect is to assume that the future is not more closely bound
up with the present in the external world than it is in our own inner
life.
[Sidenote: Each of these contradictory interpretations of causality and
duration by itself safeguards freedom; taken together they destroy it.]
It follows from this twofold analysis that the principle of causality
involves two contradictory conceptions of duration, two mutually
exclusive ways of prefiguring the future in the present. Sometimes
all phenomena, physical or psychical, are pictured as _enduring_ in
the same way, and therefore in the way that _we_ do: in this case the
future will exist in the present only as an idea, and the passing from
the present to the future will take the form of an effort which does
not always lead to the realization of the idea conceived. Sometimes,
on the other hand, duration is regarded as the characteristic form
of conscious states; in this case, things are no longer supposed to
_endure_ as we do, and a mathematical pre-existence of their future
in their present is admitted. Now, each of these two hypotheses, when
taken by itself, safeguards human freedom; for the first would lead
to the result that even the phenomena of nature were contingent, and
the second, by attributing the necessary determination of physical
phenomena to the fact that things do not _endure_ as we do, invites
us to regard the self which is subject to duration as a free force.
Therefore, every clear conception of causality, where we know our own
meaning, leads to the idea of human freedom as a natural consequence.
Unfortunately, the habit has grown up of taking the principle of
causality in both senses at the same time, because the one is more
flattering to our imagination and the other is more favourable to
mathematical reasoning. Sometimes we think particularly of the regular
_succession_ of physical phenomena and of the kind of inner effort by
which one _becomes_ another; sometimes we fix our mind on the absolute
_regularity_ of these phenomena, and from the idea of regularity we
pass by imperceptible steps to that of mathematical necessity, which
excludes duration understood in the first way. And we do not see any
harm in letting these two conceptions blend into one another, and
in assigning greater importance to the one or the other according
as we are more or less concerned with the interests of science. But
to apply the principle of causality, in this ambiguous form, to the
succession of conscious states, is uselessly and wantonly to run into
inextricable difficulties. The idea of force, which really excludes
that of necessary determination, has got into the habit, so to speak,
of amalgamating with that of necessity, in consequence of the very
use which we make of the principle of causality in nature. On the one
hand, we know force only through the witness of consciousness, and
consciousness does not assert, does not even understand, the absolute
determination, now, of actions that are still to come: that is all that
experience teaches us, and if we hold by experience we should say that
we feel ourselves free, that we perceive force, rightly or wrongly,
as a free spontaneity. But, on the other hand, this idea of force,
carried over into nature, travelling there side by side with the idea
of necessity, has got corrupted before it returns from the journey. It
returns impregnated with the idea of necessity: and in the light of
the rôle which we have made it play in the external world, we regard
force as determining with strict necessity the effects which flow from
it. Here again the mistake made by consciousness arises from the fact
that it looks at the self, not directly, but by a kind of refraction
through the forms which it has lent to external perception, and which
the latter does not give back without having left its mark on them.
A compromise, as it were, has been brought about between the idea
of force and that of necessary determination. The wholly mechanical
determination of two external phenomena by one another now assumes in
our eyes the same form as the dynamic relation of our exertion of force
to the act which springs from it: but, in return, this latter relation
takes the form of a mathematical derivation, the human action being
supposed to issue mechanically, and therefore necessarily, from the
force which produces it. There is no doubt that this mingling of two
different and almost opposite ideas offers advantages to common sense,
since it enables us to picture in the same way, and denote by one and
the same word, both the relation which exists between two moments
of our life and that which binds together the successive moments of
the external world. We have seen that, though our deepest conscious
states exclude numerical multiplicity, yet we break them up into
parts external to one another; that though the elements of concrete
duration permeate one another, duration expressing itself in extensity
exhibits moments as distinct as the bodies scattered in space. Is it
surprising, then, that between the moments of our life, when it has
been, so to speak, objectified, we set up a relation analogous to the
objective relation of causality, and that an exchange, which again may
be compared to the phenomenon of endosmosis, takes place between the
dynamic idea of free effort and the mathematical concept of necessary
determination?
[Sidenote: Though united in popular thought, the ideas of free effort
and necessary determination are kept apart by physical science.]
But the sundering of these two ideas is an accomplished fact in the
natural sciences. The physicist may speak of _forces,_ and even picture
their mode of action by analogy with an inner effort, but he will
never introduce this hypothesis into a scientific explanation. Even
those who, with Faraday, replace the extended atoms by dynamic points,
will treat the centres of force and the lines of force mathematically,
without troubling about force itself considered as an activity or an
effort. It thus comes to be understood that the relation of external
causality is purely mathematical, and has no resemblance to the
relation between psychical force and the act which springs from it.
[Sidenote: They should be kept apart too by psychology.]
It is now time to add that the relation of inner causality is purely
dynamic, and has no analogy with the relation of two external phenomena
which condition one another. For as the latter are capable of recurring
in a homogeneous space, their relation can be expressed in terms of a
law, whereas deep-seated psychic states occur once in consciousness
and will never occur again. A careful analysis of the psychological
phenomenon led us to this conclusion in the beginning: the study of the
notions of causality and duration, viewed in themselves, has merely
confirmed it.
[Sidenote: Freedom real but indefineable.]
We can now formulate our conception of freedom. Freedom is the relation
of the concrete self to the act which it performs. This relation is
indefinable, just because we _are_ free. For we can analyse a thing,
but not a process; we can break up extensity, but not duration. Or,
if we persist in analysing it, we unconsciously transform the process
into a thing and duration into extensity. By the very fact of breaking
up concrete time we set out its moments in homogeneous space; in place
of the doing we put the already done; and, as we have begun by, so
to speak, stereotyping the activity of the self, we see spontaneity
settle down into inertia and freedom into necessity. Thus, any positive
definition of freedom will ensure the victory of determinism.
Shall we define the free act by saying of this act, when it is once
done, that it might have been left undone? But this assertion, as also
its opposite, implies the idea of an absolute equivalence between
concrete duration and its spatial symbol: and as soon as we admit this
equivalence, we are led on, by the very development of the formula
which we have just set forth, to the most rigid determinism.
Shall we define the free act as "that which could not be foreseen, even
when all the conditions were known in advance?" But to conceive all the
conditions as given, is, when dealing with concrete duration, to place
oneself at the very moment at which the act is being performed. Or else
it is admitted that the matter of psychic duration can be pictured
symbolically in advance, which amounts, as we said, to treating time
as a homogeneous medium, and to reasserting in new words the absolute
equivalence of duration with its symbol. A closer study of this second
definition of freedom will thus bring us once more to determinism.
Shall we finally define the free act by saying that it is not
necessarily determined by its cause? But either these words lose their
meaning or we understand by them that the same inner causes will not
always call forth the same effects. We admit, then, that the psychic
antecedents of a free act can be repeated, that freedom is displayed
in a duration whose moments resemble one another, and that time is a
homogeneous medium, like space. We shall thus be brought back to the
idea of an equivalence between duration and its spatial symbol; and by
pressing the definition of freedom which we have laid down, we shall
once more get determinism out of it.
To sum up; every demand for explanation in regard to freedom comes
back, without our suspecting it, to the following question: "Can time
be adequately represented by space?" To which we answer: Yes, if you
are dealing with time flown; No, if you speak of time flowing. Now, the
free act takes place in time which is flowing and not in time which has
already flown. Freedom is therefore a fact, and among the facts which
we observe there is none clearer. All the difficulties of the problem,
and the problem itself, arise from the desire to endow duration with
the same attributes as extensity, to interpret a succession by a
simultaneity, and to express the idea of freedom in a language into
which it is obviously untranslatable.
CONCLUSION
[Sidenote: Modern psychology holds hat we perceive things through forms
borrowed from our own constitution.]
To sum up the foregoing discussion, we shall put aside for the present
Kant's terminology and also his doctrine, to which we shall return
later, and we shall take the point of view of common sense. Modern
psychology seems to us particularly concerned to prove that we perceive
things through the medium of certain forms, borrowed from our own
constitution. This tendency has become more and more marked since Kant:
while the German philosopher drew a sharp line of separation between
time and space, the extensive and the intensive, and, as we should say
to-day, consciousness and external perception, the empirical school,
carrying analysis still further, tries to reconstruct the extensive out
of the intensive, space out of duration, and externality out of inner
states. Physics, moreover, comes in to complete the work of psychology
in this respect: it shows that, if we wish to forecast phenomena,
we must make a clean sweep of the impression which they produce on
consciousness and treat sensations as signs of reality, not as reality
itself.
[Sidenote: But are not the states of the self perceived through forms
borrowed from the external world?]
It seemed to us that there was good reason to set ourselves the
opposite problem and to ask whether the most obvious states of the
ego itself, which we believe that we grasp directly, are not mostly
perceived through the medium of certain forms borrowed from the
external world, which thus gives us back what we have lent it. _A
priori_ it seems fairly probable that this is what happens. For,
assuming that the forms alluded to, into which we fit matter, come
entirely from the mind, it seems difficult to apply them constantly to
objects without the latter soon leaving a mark on them: by then using
these forms to gain a knowledge of our own person we run the risk of
mistaking for the colouring of the self the reflection of the frame
in which we place it, i.e. the external world. But one can go further
still and assert that forms applicable to things cannot be entirely our
own work, that they must result from a compromise between matter and
mind, that if we give much to matter we probably receive something from
it, and that thus, when we try to grasp ourselves after an excursion
into the external world, we no longer have our hands free.
[Sidenote: To understand the intensity, duration and voluntary
determination of psychic states, we must eliminate the idea of space.]
Now just as, in order to ascertain the real relations of physical
phenomena to one another, we abstract whatever obviously clashes with
them in our way of perceiving and thinking, so, in order to view the
self in its original purity, psychology ought to eliminate or correct
certain forms which bear the obvious mark of the external world. What
are these forms? When isolated from one another and regarded as so many
distinct units, psychic states seem to be more or less _intense._ Next,
looked at in their multiplicity, they unfold in time and constitute
_duration._ Finally, in their relations to one another, and in so
far as a certain unity is preserved throughout their multiplicity,
they seem to _determine_ one another. Intensity, duration, voluntary
determination, these are the three ideas which had to be clarified by
ridding them of all that they owe to the intrusion of the sensible
world and, in a word, to the obsession of the idea of space.
[Sidenote: Intensity is quality and not quantity or magnitude.]
Examining the first of these ideas, we found that psychic phenomena
were in themselves pure quality or qualitative multiplicity, and that,
on the other hand, their cause situated in space was quantity. In so
far as this quality becomes the sign of the quantity and we suspect
the presence of the latter behind the former, we call it intensity.
The intensity of a simple state, therefore, is not quantity but its
qualitative sign. You will find that it arises from a compromise
between pure quality, which is the state of consciousness, and pure
quantity, which is necessarily space. Now you give up this compromise
without the least scruple when you study external things, since you
then leave aside the forces themselves, assuming that they exist,
and consider only their measurable and extended effects. Why, then,
do you keep to this hybrid concept when you analyse in its turn the
state of consciousness? If magnitude, outside you, is never intensive,
intensity, within you, is never magnitude. It is through having
overlooked this that philosophers have been compelled to distinguish
two kinds of quantity, the one extensive, the other intensive, without
ever succeeding in explaining what they had in common or how the
same words "increase" and "decrease" could be used for things so
unlike. In the same way they are responsible for the exaggerations of
psychophysics, for as soon as the power of increasing in magnitude
is attributed to sensation in any other than a metaphorical sense,
we are invited to find out by how much it increases. And, although
consciousness does not measure intensive quantity, it does not follow
that science may not succeed indirectly in doing so, if it be a
magnitude. Hence, either a psychophysical formula is possible or the
intensity of a simple psychic state is pure quality.
[Sidenote: Our conscious states not a discreet multiplicity.]
Turning then to the concept of multiplicity, we saw that to construct a
number we must first have the intuition of a homogeneous medium, viz.
space, in which terms distinct from one another could be set out in
line, and, secondly, a process of permeation and organization by which
these units are dynamically added together and form what we called a
qualitative multiplicity. It is owing to this dynamic process that
the units _get added,_ but it is because of their presence in space
that they remain _distinct._ Hence number or discrete multiplicity
also results from a compromise. Now, when we consider material objects
in themselves, we give up this compromise, since we regard them as
impenetrable and divisible, i.e. endlessly distinct from one another.
Therefore, we must give it up, too, when we study our own selves. It
is through having failed to do so that associationism has made many
mistakes, such as trying to reconstruct a psychic state by the addition
of distinct states of consciousness, thus substituting the symbol of
the ego for the ego itself.
These preliminary considerations enabled us to approach the principal
object of this work, the analysis of the ideas of duration and
voluntary determination.
[Sidenote: Inner duration is a qualitative multiplicity.]
What is duration within us? A qualitative multiplicity, with no
likeness to number; an organic evolution which is yet not an increasing
quantity; a pure heterogeneity within which there are no distinct
qualities. In a word, the moments of inner duration are not external to
one another.
[Sidenote: In the external we find not duration but simultaneity.]
What duration is there existing outside us? The present only, or, if we
prefer the expression, simultaneity. No doubt external things change,
but their moments do not _succeed_ one another, if we retain the
ordinary meaning of the word, except for a consciousness which keeps
them in mind. We observe outside us at a given moment a whole system
of simultaneous positions; of the simultaneities which have preceded
them nothing remains. To put duration in space is really to contradict
oneself and place succession within simultaneity. Hence we must not
say that external things _endure,_ but rather that there is in them
some inexpressible reason in virtue of which we cannot examine them at
successive moments of our own duration without observing that they have
changed. But this change does not involve succession unless the word is
taken in a new meaning: on this point we have noted the agreement of
science and common sense.
Thus in consciousness we find states which succeed, without being
distinguished from one another; and in space simultaneities which,
without succeeding, are distinguished from one another, in the sense
that one has ceased to exist when the other appears. Outside us, mutual
externality without succession; within us, succession without mutual
externality.
[Sidenote: The idea of a measurable time arises from compromise between
ideas of succession and externality.]
Here again a compromise comes in. To the simultaneities, which
constitute the external world, and, although distinct, succeed
one another _for our consciousness,_ we attribute succession _in
themselves._ Hence the idea that things _endure_ as we do ourselves
and that time may be brought within space. But while our consciousness
thus introduces succession into external things, inversely these things
themselves externalize the successive moments of our inner duration
in relation to one another. The simultaneities of physical phenomena,
absolutely distinct in the sense that the one has ceased to be when
the other takes place, cut up into portions, which are also distinct
and external to one another, an inner life in which succession implies
interpenetration, just as the pendulum of a clock cuts up into distinct
fragments and spreads out, so to speak, lengthwise, the dynamic and
undivided tension of the spring. Thus, by a real process of endosmosis
we get the mixed idea of a measurable time, which is space in so far as
it is homogeneity, and duration in so far as it is succession, that is
to say, at bottom, the contradictory idea of succession in simultaneity.
[Sidenote: As science eliminates duration from the outer, philosophy
must eliminate space from the inner world.]
Now, these two elements, extensity and duration, science tears asunder
when it undertakes the close study of external things. For we have
pointed out that science retains nothing of duration but simultaneity,
and nothing of motion itself position of the moving body, i.e.
immobility. A very sharp separation is here made and space gets the
best of it.
Therefore the same separation will have to be made again, but this time
to the advantage of duration, when inner phenomena are studied,--not
inner phenomena once developed, to be sure, or after the discursive
reason has separated them and set them out in a homogeneous medium in
order to understand them, but inner phenomena in their developing, and
in so far as they make up, by their interpenetration, the continuous
evolution of a free person. Duration, thus restored to its original
purity, will appear as a wholly qualitative multiplicity, an absolute
heterogeneity of elements which pass over into one another.
[Sidenote: The neglect to separate extensity and duration leads one
party to deny freedom and the other to define it.]
Now it is because they have neglected to make this necessary separation
that one party has been led to deny freedom and the other to define it,
and thereby, involuntarily, to deny it too. They ask in fact whether
the act could or could not be foreseen, the whole of its conditions
being given; and whether they assert it or deny it, they admit that
this totality of conditions could be conceived as given in advance:
which amounts, as we have shown, to treating duration as a homogeneous
thing and intensities as magnitudes. They will either say that the
act is _determined_ by its conditions, without perceiving that they
are playing on the double sense of the word causality, and that
they are thus giving to duration at the same time two forms which
are mutually exclusive. Or else they will appeal to the principle of
the conservation of energy, without asking whether this principle is
equally applicable to the moments of the external world, which are
equivalent to one another, and to the moments of a living and conscious
being, which acquire a richer and richer content. In whatever way, in
a word, freedom is viewed, it cannot be denied except on condition of
identifying time with space; it cannot be defined except on condition
of demanding that space should adequately represent time; it cannot
be argued about in one sense or the other except on condition of
previously confusing succession and simultaneity. All determinism will
thus be refuted by experience, but every attempt to define freedom will
open the way to determinism.
[Sidenote: This separation favourable to physical science, but against
the interests of language and social life.]
Inquiring then why this separation of duration and extensity, which
science carries out so naturally in the external world, demands such
an effort and rouses so much repugnance when it is a question of inner
states, we were not long in perceiving the reason. The main object of
science is to forecast and measure: now we cannot forecast physical
phenomena except on condition that we assume that they do not _endure_
as we do; and, on the other hand, the only thing we are able to measure
is space. Hence the breach here comes about of itself between quality
and quantity, between true duration and pure extensity. But when we
turn to our conscious states, we have everything to gain by keeping
up the illusion through which we make them share in the reciprocal
externality of outer things, because this distinctness, and at the
same time this solidification, enables us to give them fixed names
in spite of their instability, and distinct ones in spite of their
interpenetration. It enables us to objectify them, to throw them out
into the current of social life.
[Sidenote: Hence two different selves: (1) the fundamental self; (2)
its spatial and social representation: only the former is free.]
Hence there are finally two different selves, one of which is, as
it were, the external projection of the other, its spatial and,
so to speak, social representation. We reach the former by deep
introspection, which leads us to grasp our inner states as living
things, constantly _becoming,_ as states not amenable to measure,
which permeate one another and of which the succession in duration has
nothing in common with juxtaposition in homogeneous space. But the
moments at which we thus grasp ourselves are rare, and that is just
why we are rarely free. The greater part of the time we live outside
ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our own ghost, a
colourless shadow which pure duration projects into homogeneous space.
Hence our life unfolds in space rather than in time; we live for the
external world rather than for ourselves; we speak rather than think;
we "are acted" rather than act ourselves. To act freely is to recover
possession of oneself, and to get back into pure duration.
[Sidenote: Kant clung to freedom, but put the self which is free
outside both space and time.]
Kant's great mistake was to take time as a homogeneous medium. He did
not notice that real duration is made up of moments inside one another,
and that when it seems to assume the form of a homogeneous whole, it
is because it gets expressed in space. Thus the very distinction which
he makes between space and time amounts at bottom to confusing time
with space, and the symbolical representation of the ego with the ego
itself. He thought that consciousness was incapable of perceiving
psychic states otherwise than by juxtaposition, forgetting that a
medium in which these states are set side by side and distinguished
from one another is of course space, and not duration. He was thereby
led to believe that the same states can recur in the depths of
consciousness, just as the same physical phenomena are repeated in
space; this at least is what he implicitly admitted when he ascribed to
the causal relation the same meaning and the same function in the inner
as in the outer world. Thus freedom was made into an incomprehensible
fact. And yet, owing to his unlimited though unconscious confidence
in this inner perception whose scope he tried to restrict, his belief
in freedom remained unshakable. He therefore raised it to the sphere
of noumena; and as he had confused duration with space, he made this
genuine free self, which is indeed outside space, into a self which is
supposed to be outside duration too, and therefore out of the reach
of our faculty of knowledge. But the truth is that we perceive this
self whenever, by a strenuous effort of reflection, we turn our eyes
from the shadow which follows us and retire into ourselves. Though we
generally live and act outside our own person, in space rather than
in duration, and though by this means we give a handle to the law of
causality, which binds the same effects to the same causes, we can
nevertheless always get back into pure duration, of which the moments
are internal and heterogeneous to one another, and in which a cause
cannot repeat its effect since it will never repeat itself.
[Sidenote: Kant regarded both space and time as homogeneous.]
In this very confusion of true duration with its symbol both the
strength and the weakness of Kantianism reside. Kant imagines on the
one side "things in themselves," and on the other a homogeneous Time
and Space, through which the "things in themselves," are refracted:
thus are supposed to arise on the one hand the phenomenal self--a self
which consciousness perceives--and, on the other, external objects.
Time and space on this view would not be any more in us than outside
us; the very distinction of outside and inside would be the work of
time and space. This doctrine has the advantage of providing our
empirical thought with a solid foundation, and of guaranteeing that
phenomena, as phenomena, are adequately knowable. Indeed, we might set
up these phenomena as absolute and do without the incomprehensible
"things in themselves," were it not that the Practical Reason, the
revealer of duty, came in, like the Platonic reminiscence, to warn
us that the "thing in itself" exists, invisible but present. The
controlling factor in the whole of this theory is the very sharp
distinction between the matter of consciousness and its form, between
the homogeneous and the heterogeneous, and this vital distinction would
probably never have been made unless time also had been regarded as a
medium indifferent to what fills it.
[Sidenote: But if time, as duration, were homogeneous, science could
deal with it.]
But if time, as immediate consciousness perceives it, were, like space,
a homogeneous medium, science would be able to deal with it, as it can
with space. Now we have tried to prove that duration, as duration, and
motion, as motion, elude the grasp of mathematics: of time everything
slips through its fingers but simultaneity, and of movement everything
but immobility. This is what the Kantians and even their opponents
do not seem to have perceived: in this so-called phenomenal world,
which, we are told, is a world cut out for scientific knowledge, all
the relations which cannot be translated into simultaneity, i.e. into
space, are scientifically unknowable.
[Sidenote: And freedom would be incomprehensible. Kant's solution.]
In the second place, in a duration assumed to be homogeneous, the
same states could occur over again, causality would imply necessary
determination, and all freedom would become incomprehensible. Such,
indeed, is the result to which the Critique of Pure Reason leads. But
instead of concluding from this that real duration is heterogeneous,
which, by clearing up the second difficulty, would have called his
attention to the first, Kant preferred to put freedom outside time and
to raise an impassable barrier between the world of phenomena, which
he hands over root and branch to our understanding, and the world of
things in themselves, which he forbids us to enter.
[Sidenote: How corrected by taking real duration into account.]
But perhaps this distinction is too sharply drawn and perhaps the
barrier is easier to cross than he supposed. For if perchance the
moments of real duration, perceived by an attentive consciousness,
permeated one another instead of lying side by side, and if these
moments formed in relation to one another a heterogeneity within which
the idea of necessary determination lost every shred of meaning, then
the self grasped by consciousness would be a free cause, we should have
absolute knowledge of ourselves, and, on the other hand, just because
this absolute constantly commingles with phenomena and, while filling
itself with them, permeates them, these phenomena themselves would not
be as amenable as is claimed to mathematical reasoning,
[Sidenote: With Kant, we assume a homogeneous space, the intuition of
which is peculiar to man and prepares the way for social life.]
So we have assumed the existence of a homogeneous Space and, with
Kant, distinguished this space from the matter which fills it.
With him we have admitted that homogeneous space is a "form of our
sensibility": and we understand by this simply that other minds, e.g.
those of animals, social life, although they perceive objects, do not
distinguish them so clearly either from one another or from themselves.
This intuition of a homogeneous medium, an intuition peculiar to man,
enables us to externalize our concepts in relation to one another,
reveals to us the objectivity of things, and thus, in two ways, on the
one hand by getting everything ready for language, and on the other by
showing us an external world, quite distinct from ourselves, in the
perception of which all minds have a common share, foreshadows and
prepares the way for social life.
[Sidenote: But if concrete duration is heterogeneous, the relation of
psychic state to act is unique and the act is rightly judged free.]
Over against this homogeneous space we have put the self as perceived
by an attentive consciousness, a living self, whose states, at once
undistinguished and unstable, cannot _be_ separated without changing
their nature, and cannot receive a fixed form or be expressed in
words without becoming public property. How could this self, which
distinguishes external objects so sharply and represents them so easily
by means of symbols, withstand the temptation to introduce the same
distinctions into its own life and to replace the interpenetration
of its psychic states, their wholly qualitative multiplicity, by a
numerical plurality of terms which are distinguished from one another,
set side by side, and expressed by means of words? In place of a
heterogeneous duration whose moments permeate one another, we thus
get a homogeneous time whose moments are strung on a spatial line. In
place of an inner life whose successive phases, each unique of its
kind, cannot be expressed in the fixed terms of language, we get a self
which can be artificially reconstructed, and simple psychic states
which can be added to and taken from one another just like the letters
of the alphabet in forming words. Now, this must not be thought to be
a mode of symbolical representation only, for immediate intuition and
discursive thought are one in concrete reality, and the very mechanism
by which we only meant at first to explain our conduct will end by
also controlling it. Our psychic states, separating then from each
other, will get solidified; between our ideas, thus crystallized, and
our external movements we shall witness permanent associations being
formed; and little by little, as our consciousness thus imitates the
process by which nervous matter procures reflex actions, automatism
will cover over freedom.[10] It is just at this point that the
associationists and the determinists come in on the one side, and the
Kantians on the other. As they look at only the commonest aspect of
our conscious life, they perceive clearly marked states, which can
recur in time like physical phenomena, and to which the law of causal
determination applies, if we wish, in the same sense as it does to
nature. As, on the other hand, the medium in which these psychic states
are set side by side exhibits parts external to one another, in which
the same facts seem capable of being repeated, they do not hesitate to
make time a homogeneous medium and treat it as space. Henceforth all
difference between duration and extensity, succession and simultaneity,
is abolished: the only thing left is to turn freedom out of doors,
or, if you cannot entirely throw off your traditional respect for it,
to escort it with all due ceremony up to the supratemporal domain of
"things in themselves," whose mysterious threshold your consciousness
cannot cross. But, in our view, there is a third course which might be
taken, namely, to carry ourselves back in thought to those moments of
our life when we made some serious decision, moments unique of their
kind, which will never be repeated--**any more than the past phases
in the history of a nation will ever come back again. We should see
that if these past states cannot be adequately expressed in words or
artificially reconstructed by a juxtaposition of simpler states, it is
because in their dynamic unity and wholly qualitative multiplicity they
are phases of our real and concrete duration, a heterogeneous duration
and a living one. We should see that, if our action was pronounced by
us to be free, it is because the relation of this action to the state
from which it issued could not be expressed by a law, this psychic
state being unique of its kind and unable ever to occur again. We
should see, finally, that the very idea of necessary determination here
loses every shred of meaning, that there cannot be any question either
of foreseeing the act before it is performed or of reasoning about the
possibility of the contrary action once the deed is done, for to have
all the conditions given is, in concrete duration, to place oneself
at the very moment of the act and not to foresee it. But we should
also understand the illusion which makes the one party think that they
are compelled to deny freedom, and the others that they must define
it. It is because the transition is made by imperceptible steps from
concrete duration, whose elements permeate one another, to symbolical
duration, whose moments are set side by side, and consequently from
free activity to conscious automatism. It is because, although we are
free whenever we are willing to get back into ourselves, it seldom
happens that we are willing. It is because, finally, even in the
cases where the action is freely performed, we cannot reason about it
without setting out its conditions externally to one another, therefore
in space and no longer in pure duration. The problem of freedom has
thus sprung from a misunderstanding: it has been to the moderns what
the paradoxes of the Eleatics were to the ancients, and, like these
paradoxes, it has its origin in the illusion through which we confuse
succession and simultaneity, duration and extensity, quality and
quantity.
[1] On this point see Lange, _History of Materialism,_ Vol. ii, Part ii.
[2] Cf. _Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy._5th ed., (1878),
p. 583.
[3] _Ibid._ p. 585.
[4] _Ibid._ p. 585.
[5] _The Emotions and the Will,_ Chap. vi.
[6] Fouillée, _La Liberté et le Déterminisme._
[7] In Molière's comedy _Le Misanthrope, (Tr.)_.
[8] _Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy._ 5th ed., (1878), p.
580.
[9] _Ibid._ p. 583.
[10] of these voluntary acts which may be compared to reflex movements,
and he has restricted freedom to moments of crisis. But he does not
seem to have noticed that the process of our free activity goes
on, as it were, unknown to ourselves, in the obscure depths of our
consciousness at every moment of duration, that the very feeling of
duration comes from this source, and that without this heterogeneous
and continuous duration, in which our self evolves, there would be no
moral crisis. The study, even the close study, of a given free action
will thus not settle the problem of freedom. The whole series of our
heterogeneous states of consciousness must be taken into consideration.
In other words, it is in a close analysis of the idea of duration that
the key to the problem must be sought.