puts succession at the very centre of simultaneity. We shall see that the contradictions implied in the problems of causality, freedom, personality, spring from no other source, and that, if we wish to get rid of them, we have only to go back to the real and concrete self and give up its symbolical substitute.
CHAPTER III THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES 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. Dyna- mism starts from the idea of voluntary activity, given by consciousness, and conies to represent inertia by gradually empty ing 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.
A thorough examination of these two concep tions of nature will show that they involve two For dynam- very different hypotheses as to the rela- raai than tions between laws and the facts which cism ™e- they govern. As he looks higher and tihid& The higher, the believer in dynamism thinks taneity gim- that he perceives facts which more and pier uiaii that ijji «• i t i of inertia, more elude the grasp of laws: he thus 140 CHAP, m DYNAMISM AND MECHANISM 14!
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, dis covers within the particular fact a certain num ber of laws of which the fact is thus made to be the meeting point, and nothing else: on this hypothe sis 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 dyna mism 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 calcu lated: 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 mechan ism 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 pro duced by the interference of two lights. Re garded 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 142 TIME AND FREE WILL CHA*. in is self-sufficient. For each of us has the immedi ate 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.
A posteriori, however, definite facts are appealed to against freedom, some physical, others psycho logical. Sometimes it is asserted that Determinism:,.., n (i) physical our actions are necessitated by our (3) psycholo-.,.
gtcai. Former feelings, our ideas, and the whole prereduoible to...latter, which ceding series of our conscious states; inaccurate sometimes freedom is denounced as being multiplicity oi incompatible with the fundamental pro- •tates m dor- perties 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 CHAP, in PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 143 that psychological determinism itself, and the refutations which are given of it, rest on an inac curate 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 activ ity cannot be compared to that of any other force.
Physical determinism, in its latest form, is closely bound up with mechanical or rather kinetic Physical de- theories of matter. The universe is stated in the pictured as a heap of matter which the the molecular imagination resolves into molecules and theory ol mat- <_,.,, ter. 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 momert will be modified by the shocks which the nervous system receives from the sur- TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP. HI rounding 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 result ant 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 phenom enon.1 We shall not raise any difficulty about recog- 1 On this point see Lange, History,•>/ Materialism, Vol. ii, Part ii.
CHAP, in PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 145 nizing that this conception of physiological phe- H principle oi nomena in general, and nervous pheconservation,, oi energy is nomena in particular, is a very natural physiological deduction from the law of the conservaand nervons.. ~.,,, phenomena are tion of energy. Certainly, the atomic necessitated,,.,..,,, but perhaps not theory of matter is still at the hypo- states, thetical stage, and the purely kinetic ex planations 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 con servation 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 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in of energy cannot be admitted except in virtue of some psychological hypothesis.
Even if we assumed that the position, the direc tion and the velocity of each atom of cerebral TO prove con- matter are determined at every moment of time, it would not at all follow that our 8howdahnlcees- psychic life is subject to the same necesio^7 between ^ty- ^Or WG snou^ nrst nave to prOVC £j™ JJfeSf9" that a strictly determined psychic state NO such proof, 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 obvi ously bound up with certain determining condi tions, 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 CHAP, m PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 147 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 corre spondence between states of consciousness and modes of extension. Leibniz ascribed it to a pre- established harmony, and would never have admitted that a motion could give rise to a per ception 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, what- TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in ever 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 mole cular 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.
Consciousness indeed informs us that the ma jority of our actions can be explained by motives. Physical But it does not appear that determinadeterminism,.
when assumed tion here means necessity, since common to be universal,..,. _, - postulates sense believes in free will. The deterpsychological..,, determinism, mmist, however, led astray by a concep tion of duration and causality which we shall criticise a little later, holds that the determina tion 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 CHAP, in PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 149 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 circum stances 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 per formed 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. But we must own that the amount of freedom which is left to us after strictly complying with the is the princi- principle of the conservation of energy vation oi is rather limited. For, even if this law versaiiy valid? does not exert a necessitating in liuence over the course of our ideas, it will at least determine our movements. Our inner life will 150 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in 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 conserva tion 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.
We must not overrate the part played by the principle of the conservation of energy in the his tory of the natural sciences. In its It implies that J.
a sysum can present form it marks a certain phase return to its f..., original in the evolution of certain sciences; but itata. Keg-.,,.
lecta duration, it has not been the governing factor in henoeinapplic-..., able to living this evolution and we should be wrong conscious hi 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 CHAP, in PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 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 posi tive 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 experi ence 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 calcula tions. 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 pheno- 152 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in mena 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 neces sary 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 move ment can create sensation out of a zero of con sciousness, 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, CHAP, in PHYSICAL DETERMINISM 153 though vague, belief of mankind in the conserva tion 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 con scious 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