CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND PREDICTION IQ7 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 defi nite action, which might be compared to the definite position of a planet in space, the know ledge 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 modify ing 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?
Thus, when we ask whether a future action could have been foreseen, we unwittingly identify that time with which we have to do in Difference be-,...tween past and the exact sciences, and which is reducible future duration in this to a number, with real duration, whose so-called quantity is really a quality, ig8 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in and which we canaot 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, with out 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 con sciousness, 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.
CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY Only one course will remain open to the determinist. He will probably give up asserting the possibility of foreseeing a certain future The determin- r ist argument act or state of consciousness, but will that psychic...-.
phenomena maintain that every act is determined are subject to,..., the law" same by its psychic antecedents, or, in other antecedents,../,, same ^conse- words, that the facts of consciousness, like the phenomena of nature, are sub ject 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.
This last form of the determinist argument differs less than might be thought from all the , others which have been examined above.
But as regards inner states To say that the same inner causes will the same an- ', rf tecedents will reproduce the same effects is to asnever recur.
sume that the same cause can ap pear a second time on the stage of conscious ness. Now, if duration is what we say, deep- 2QO TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in 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 differ ence of time, the physicist can again encounter identical elementary conditions, duration is some thing real for the consciousness which preserves the trace of it, and we cannot here speak of iden tical 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 com pared 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 beg ging 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 CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 2OI 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 action is 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. 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 Analysis of the.. ^ f conception oi point of view the meaning of the two cause, which _...underlies the words determination and causal- whole deter-.,, _.,1,1 minist argu- ity. In vain do we argue that there cannot be any question either of fore seeing a future action in the way that an astro nomical phenomenon is foreseen, or of asserting, when once an action is done, that any other action would have been impossible under the given con ditions. In vain do we add that, even when it takes this form: " The same causes produce the same effects," the principle of universal determina tion loses every shred of meaning in the inner world of conscious states. The determinist will perhaps 2O2 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in yield to our arguments on each of these three points in particular, will admit that in the psy chical 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 misapprehen sion 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.
We perceive physical phenomena, and these phenomena obey laws. This means: (i) that " regular sue- ceivcd, can occur again in the same cession " does...not apply to shape; (2) that a certain phenomenon nates and P, which appeared after the conditions rove free 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 princi ple of causality told us nothing more, as the em piricists 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 un derstood that definite antecedents give rise to a CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 2O3 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 pro blem 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 pheno mena 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 objec tively, in some way or other, within the first pheno menon. And common sense was bound to come to this conclusion, because to distinguish exactly 204 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in 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.
In the first place, mathematics furnishes us with one type of this kind of prefiguring. The causality, as verY movement by which we draw the £j ^f^i circumference of a circle on a sheet of mown P£eniS paper generates all the mathematical ne properties of this figure: in this sense phe- an unlimited number of theorems can O 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 con tained 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 CHAP, m REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 2<>5 equivalent to one another. But, just because they are perceived through our sense-organs, we seem justified in ascribing their qualitative differ ences to the impression which they make on us and in assuming, behind the heterogeneity of our sen sations, a homogeneous physical universe. Thus, we shall strip matter of the concrete qualities with which our senses clothe it, colour, heat, re sistance, even weight, and we shall finally find ourselves confronted with homogeneous extensity, space without body. The only step then remain ing will be to describe figures in space, to make them move according to mathematically formu lated 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. Pic ture 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 2o6 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in reality, — you will be merely drawing the conse quences 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 pro found 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 ele ments of bodies; the atom thus becomes a move ment, and physical phenomena are reduced to regular movements taking place within an incom pressible 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 sup posed, 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 CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 207 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 can not be represented under the concrete form of an image. And it would not be difficult to prove that the more the progress of mechanical explana tions enables us to develop this conception of causality and therefore to relieve the atom of the weight of its sensible qualities, the more the con crete existence of the phenomena of nature tends to vanish into algebraical smoke.
Thus understood, the relation of causality is a necessary relation in the sense that it will inde- it thus leads finitely approach the relation of identity, as a curve approaches its asymptote. "St The principle of identity is the absolute Star? to "pre- ^aw °* our consciousness I it asserts - tnat what is thought is thought at the ration. 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 208 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, 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 pre sent, 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 inde finite 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 CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 20Q this anxiety shows itself in a tendency to trans form relations of succession into relations of inherence, to do away with active duration, and to substitute for apparent causality a fundamental identity.
Now, if the development of the notion of causality, understood in the sense of necessary The necessary connexion, leads to the Spinozistic or Car- tesian conception of nature, inversely, ;nb°unt" au* relation of necessary determination established between successive pheno mena may be supposed to arise from our perceiving, in a confused form, some mathe matical 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 neces sarily 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 sur prising, 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 2IO TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, in 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 determina tion of phenomena by one another becomes stronger in proportion as we are more inclined to regard duration as a subjective form of our con sciousness. 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 prin ciple of causality, the more we emphasize the difference between a physical series and a psychical one. Whence, finally, it would result (however para doxical the opinion may seem) that the assump tion of a relation of mathematical inherence be tween 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 conse quence will not concern us for the moment: we are merely trying here to trace out the first mean ing 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 CHAP, in REAL DURATION AND CAUSALITY 211 form, thanks to a certain conception of duration which, without seeming to be so, is fairly familiar to common sense.
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. Sf rUtSeSt We S°> m fact> through successive states nof^reauz!11" °^ consciousness, and although the later SeSoanotfl0in- was no* contained in the earlier, we had IS6 Jeter-" before us at the time a more or less con- mination. fused 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