whole of our conscious life. Moreover we will grant to determinism that we often resign our freedom in more serious circumstances, and that, by sluggishness or indolence, we allow this same local process to run its course when our whole \^ personality ought, so to speak, to vibrate. When our most trustworthy friends agree in advising us to take some important step, the sentiments which they utter with so much insistence lodge on the surface of our ego and there get solidified in the same way as the ideas of which we spoke just now. Little by little they will form a thick crust which will cover up our own sentiments;,/ we shall believe that we are acting freely, and it / is only by looking back to the past, later on, that v we shall see how much we were mistaken.^ But then, at the very minute when the act is going to be performed, something may revolt against it. It is the deep-seated self rushing up to the surface. It is the outer crust bursting, suddenly giving way to an irresistible thrust. Hence in the depths of the self, below this most reasonable pondering over most reasonable pieces of advice, something else was going on — a gradual heating and a sudden boiling over of feelings and ideas, not unperceived, but rather unnoticed. If we turn back to them and carefully scrutinize our memory, we shall see that we had ourselves shaped these ideas, ourselves lived these feelings, but that, through some strange reluctance to exercise our will, we had thrust them back into the darkest depths of our soul 170 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, i* whenever they came up to the surface. And this is why we seek in vain to explain our sudden change of mind by the visible circumstances which preceded it. We wish to know the reason why we have made up our mind, and we find that we have decided without any reason, and perhaps even against every reason. But, in certain cases, that is the best of reasons. For the action which has been performed does not then express some superficial idea, almost external to ourselves, distinct and easy to account for: it agrees with the whole of our most intimate feelings, thoughts and aspirations, with that particular conception of life which is the equivalent of all our past experience, in a word, with, our personal idea of happiness and of honour. (Hence it has been a mistake to look for examples in the ordinary and even indifferent circumstances of life in order to prove that man is capable of choosing without a motive.) It might easily be shown that these insignificant actions are bound up with some determining reason^ It is at the great and solemn crisis, decisive of our reputation with others, and yet more with ourselves, that we choosejn defiance of what is conventionally called a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason is the more striking the deeper our freedom goes.
But the determinist, even when he refrains from regarding the more serious emotions or deep- seated psychic states as forces, nevertheless dis tinguishes them from one another and is thus CHAP, in THE FREE ACT 17 1 led to a mechanical conception of the self. He Determinism w^ show us this self hesitating between Stride ae two contrary feelings, passing from leu-identical one *° *ne otner an^ finally deciding in Sther0ncoS- favour of one of them. The self and the SSthiifimere * een'ngs which stir it are thus treated symbolism. as wejj defined objects, which remain identical during the whole of the process. But if it is always the same self which deliberates, and if the two opposite feelings by which it is moved do not change, how, in virtue of this very principle of causality which determinism appeals to, will the self ever come to a decision? The truth is that the self, by the mere fact of experiencing the first feeling, has already changed to a slight extent when the second supervenes: all the time that the deliberation is going on, the self is changing and is consequently modifying the two feelings which agitate it. A dynamic series of states is thus formed which permeate and strengthen one another, and which will lead by a natural evolu tion to a free act. But determinism, ever craving for symbolical representation, cannot help sub stituting words for the opposite feelings which share the ego between them, as well as for the ego itself. By giving first the person and then the feelings by which he is moved a fixed form by means of sharply defined words, it deprives them in advance of every kind of living activity. It will then see on the one side an ego always self- identical, and on the other contrary feelings, also TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, m self-identical, which dispute for its possession; victory will necessarily belong to the stronger. But this mechanism, to which we have condemned ourselves in advance, has no value beyond that of a symbolical representation: it cannot hold good against the witness of an attentive conscious ness, which shows us inner dynamism as a fact. In short, we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality, when they express it, when Freedom and tnev naye that indefinable resemblance ' to it which one sometimes finds between 'aotthe artist and his work. It is no use fearlntbeoern c£ asserting that we are then yielding to it bejoretoid p ^he all-powerful influence of our char acter. Our character is still ourselves; and because we are pleased to split the person into two parts so that by an effort of abstraction we may consider Sin turn the self which feels or thinks and the self which acts, it would be very strange to conclude that one of the two selves is coercing the other. Those who ask whether we are free to alter our character lay themselves open to the same objec tion. Certainly our character is altering imper ceptibly every day, and our freedom would suffer if these new acquisitions were grafted on to our self and not blended with it. But, as soon as this blending takes place, it must be admitted that the change which has supervened in our character belongs to us, that we have appropriated it. fin a word, if it is agreed to call every act free which v ) springs from the self and from the self alone, the CHAP, m REAL DURATION AND CONTINGENCY 173 act which bears the mark of our personality is truly free, for our self alone will lay claim to its V paternity.N It would thus be recognized that free will is a fact, if it were agreed to look for it in a certain characteristic of the decision which is - taken, in the free act itself. (But the determinist * feeling that he cannot retain his hold on this posi tion, takes refuge in the past or the future. Some times he transfers himself in thought to some earlier period and asserts the necessary determina tion, from this very moment, of the act which is to come; sometimes, assuming in advance that the act is already performed, he claims that it could not have taken place in any other way. The opponents of determinism themselves will ingly follow it on to this new ground and agree to introduce into their definition of our free act — perhaps not without some risk — the anticipation of what we might do and the recollection of some other decision which we might have taken. It is advisable, then, that we should place ourselves at this new point of view, and, setting aside all translation into words, all symbolism in space, attend to what pure consciousness alone shows us about an action that has come to pass or an action which is still to come. The original error of determinism and the mistake of its opponents will thus be grasped on another side, in so far as they bear explicitly on a certain misconception of duration.
"To be conscious of free will," says Stuart 174 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, ra \ Mill, " must mean to be conscdous, before I have decided, that I am able to decide either doctrines oi way. This is really the way in which acI£.»lbl( the defenders of free will understand it; and they assert that when we perform an action freely, some other action would have been "equally possible." On this point they appeal to the testi mony of consciousness, which shows us, beyond the act itself, the power of deciding in favour of the opposite course. Inversely, determinism claims that, given certain antecedents, only one resultant action was possible. ' When we think of our selves hypothetically," Stuart Mill goes on, " as having acted otherwise than we did, we always suppose a difference in the antecedents. We pic ture ourselves as having known something that we did not know, or not known something that we did know." 2 And, faithful to his principle, the English philosopher assigns consciousness the role of informing us about what is, not about what might be. We shall not insist for the moment on this last point: we reserve the question in what sense the ego perceives itself as a determining cause. But beside this psychological question there is another, belonging rather to metaphysics, which the determinists and their opponents solve a priori along opposite lines. The argument of CHAP, m REAL DURATION AND CONTINGENCY 175 A / l\tfr* sJfl' the former implies that there is only^ne- possible act corresponding to given antecedents: the believers in free will assume, on the other hand, that the same series could issue in several different acts, equally possible. It is on this question of the equal possibility of two contrary actions or volitions that we shall first dwell: perhaps we shall thus gather some indication as to the nature of the operation by which the will makes its choice.
I hesitate between two possible actions X and Y, and I go in turn from one to the other. This means that I pass through a series of Geometrical j AiT AI. T- (and thereby states, and that these states can be deceptive),...,. T representation divided into two groups according as I oi coming to a incline more towards X or in the contrary direction. Indeed, these opposite inclina tions alone have a real existence, and X and Y are two symbols by which I represent at their arrival- or termination-points, so to speak, two different tendencies of my personality at succes sive moments of duration. Let us then rather denote the tendencies themselves by X and Y; will this new notation give a more faithful image of the concrete reality? It must be noticed, as we said above, that the self grows, expands, and changes as it passes through the two contrary states: if not, how would it ever come to a deci sion? Hence there are not exactly two contrary states, but a large number of successive and differ ent states within which I distinguish, by an effort 176 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, m of imagination, two opposite directions. Thus we shall get still nearer the reality by agreeing to use the invariable signs X and Y to denote, not these tendencies or states themselves, since they are constantly changing, but the two different di rections which our imagination ascribes to them for the greater convenience of language. It will also be under stood that these are symbolical repre sentations, that in reality there are not two tendencies, or even two di rections, but a self which lives and ir ** develops by means of its very hesita tions, until the free action drops from it like an over-ripe fruit.
But this conception of voluntary activity does not satisfy common sense, because, being essen- only real- tially a devotee of mechanism, it loves clear-cut distinctions, those which are expressed by sharply denned words or two opposite by different positions in space. Hence directioEui! °' it will picture a self which, after having traversed a series M O of conscious states, when it reaches the point O finds before it two directions 0 X and O Y, equally open. These directions thus become things, real paths into which the highroad of consciousness leads, and it depends only on the self which of them is entered upon. In short, the continuous and living activity of this self, in which we have dis- CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CONTINGENCY 177 tinguished, by abstraction only, two opposite directions, is replaced by these directions them selves, transformed into indifferent inert things awaiting our choice. But then we must certainly transfer the activity of the self somewhere or other. We will put it, according to this hypo thesis, at the point O: we will say that the self, when it reaches O and finds two courses open to it, hesitates, deliberates and finally decides in favour of one of them. As we find it difficult to picture the double direction of the conscious activity in all the phases of its continuous develop ment, we separate off these two tendencies on the one hand and the activity of the self on the other: we thus get an impartially active ego hesitating between two inert and, as it were, solidified courses of action. Now, if it decides in favour of O X, the line O Y will nevertheless remain; if it chooses O Y, the path O X will remain open, waiting in case the self retraces its steps in order to make use of it. It is in this sense that we say, when speaking of a free act, that the contrary action was equally possible. And, even if we do not draw a geometrical figure on paper, we involuntarily and almost unconsciously think of it as soon as we distinguish in the free act a number of successive phases, the conception of opposite motives, hesitation and choice — thus hiding the geometrical symbolism under a kind of verbal crystallization. Now it is easy to see that this really mechanical conception of freedom TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in issues naturally and logically in the most unbend ing determinism.
The living activity of the self, in which we distinguish by abstraction two opposite tend- if this sym- encies, will finally issue either at X or SSsthe^SSS! Y. Now, since it is agreed to localize th! aseiiityhM tne double activity of the self at the 'Sec- Pomt 0> there is no reason to separate * this ac^vity from the act in which it mits. ^ii issue and which forms part and parcel of it. And if experience shows that the decision has been in favour of X, it is not a neutral activity which should be placed at the point O, but an activity tending in advance in the direction 0 X, in spite of apparent hesitations. If, on the contrary, observation proves that the decision has been in favour of Y, we must infer that the activity localized by us at the point O was bent in this second direction in spite of some oscillations towards the first. To assert that the self, when it reaches the point O, chooses indifferently be tween X and Y, is to stop half way in the course of our geometrical symbolism; it is to separate off at the point O only a part of this continuous activity in which we undoubtedly distinguished two different directions, but which in addition has gone on to X or Y: why not take this last fact into account as well as the other two? Why not assign it the place that belongs to it in the symbolical figure which we have just constructed? But if the self, when it reaches the point O, is already CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CONTINGENCY 179 determined in one direction, there is no use in the other way remaining open, the self cannot take it. And the same rough symbolism which was meant to show the contingency of the action performed, ends, by a natural extension, in proving its abso lute necessity.
In short, defenders and opponents of free will agree in holding that the action is preceded by a Libertarians kind of mechanical oscillation between Jea£6ei£dcnot in favour of x» tne former will tell me: the other. yOU hesitated and deliberated, therefore Y was possible. The others will answer: you chose X, therefore you had some reason for doing so, and those who declare that Y was equally possible forget this reason: they leave aside one of the conditions of the problem. Now, if I dig deeper underneath these two opposite solutions, I discover a common postulate: both take up their position after the action X has been per formed, and represent the process of my voluntary activity by a path M O which branches off at the point O, the lines O X and O Y symbolizing the two directions which abstraction distinguishes within the continuous activity of which X is the goal. But while the determinists take account of all that they know, and note that the path M O X has been traversed, their opponents mean to ignore one of the data with which they have constructed the figure, and after having traced out the lines O X and O Y, which should together l8o TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in represent the progress of the activity of the self, they bring back the self to the point O to oscillate there until further orders.
It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the figure, which is really a splitting of our psychic But the fteure activity in space, is purely symbolical, £erestere<?ves an<^' as such, cannot be constructed 5PedtheieipS unless we adopt the hypothesis that th"' our deliberation is finished and our mind SS5'sinhthe made UP- If You trace it beforehand, •^ you assume that you have reached the end and are present in imagination at the final act. In short this figure does not show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done. Do not ask me then whether the self, having traversed the path M O and decided in favour of X, could or could not choose Y: I should answer that the question is meaningless, because there is no line M O, no point O, no path O X, no direction O Y. To ask such a question is to admit the possi bility of adequately representing time by space and a succession by a simultaneity. It is to ascribe to the figure we have traced the value of a description, and not merely of a symbol; it is to believe that it is possible to follow the process of psychic activity on this figure like the march of an army on a map. We have been present at the deliberation of the self in all its phases until the act was performed: then, reca pitulating the terms of the series, we perceive suc cession under the form of simultaneity, we project CHAP, ni REAL DURATION AND CONTINGENCY l8l time into space, and we base our reasoning, con sciously or unconsciously, on this geometrical figure. But this figure represents a thing and not a progress; it corresponds, in its inertness, to a kind of stereotyped memory of the whole process of deliberation and the final decision arrived at: how could it give us the least idea of the concrete movement, the dynamic progress by which the deliberation issued in the act? And yet, once the figure is constructed, we go back in imagina tion into the past and will have it that our psychic activity has followed exactly the path traced out by the figure. We thus fall into the mistake which has been pointed out above: we give a mechanical explanation of a fact, and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself. Hence we encoun- tej insuperable difficulties from the very begin- r.'sng: if the two courses were equally possible, how lave we made our choice? If only one of them was possible, why did we believe ourselves free? And we do not see that both questions come back to this: Is time space?
If I glance over a road marked on the map and follow it up to a certain point, there is F ndamentai nothing to prevent my turning back and i;iono!time trying to find out whether it branches ftii i space.
Tty.seif infai- off anywhere. But time is not a line inf,>immedi- along which one can pass again. Cer ate experience.,°.,..
of kreedom, tainly, once it has elapsed, we are justibut cannot ex-..
plain it. ned in pictunng the successive moments as external to one another and in thus thinking l82 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in of a line traversing space; but it must then be understood that this line does not symbolize the time which is passing but the time which has passed. Defenders and opponents of free will alike forget this — the former when they assert, and the latter when they deny the possibility of acting differently from what we have done. The former reason thus: " The path is not yet traced out, therefore it may take any direction whatever." To which the answer is: " You forget that it is not possible to speak of a path till the action is performed: but then it will have been traced out." The latter say: " The path has been traced out in such and such a way: therefore its possible direction was not any direc tion whatever, but only this one direction." To which the answer is: " Before the path was traced out there was no direction, either possible or impossible, for the very simple reason that there' could not yet be any question of a path." Get rid of this clumsy symbolism, the idea of which, besets you without your knowing it; you will se'; that the argument of the determinists assumes this puerile form: " The act, once performed, is performed," and that their opponents reply: ' The act, before being performed, was not yet performed." In other words, the question <._f freedom remains after this discussion exact' > where it was to begin with; nor must we be sur prised at it, since freedom must be sought hi a certain shade or quality of the action itself a id