uitaneity. succeed one another, if we retain the ordinary meaning of the word, except for a con sciousness which keeps them in mind. We ob serve outside us at a given moment a whole system of simultaneous positions; of the simul taneities 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 exter nal 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 suc cession 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, suc cession without mutual externality.
Here again a compromise comes in. To the simultaneities, which constitute the external 228 TIME AND FREE WILL world, and, although distinct, succeed one an- The idea of a other for our consciousness, we attribute measurable succession in themselves. Hence the time arises from com- j^ea that things endure as we do ourpromise beinoSenion^ud selyes and that time may be brought externality, 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, length wise, 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 succes sion in simultaneity.
Now, these two elements, extensity and dura tion, science tears asunder when it undertakes A« science tne close study of external things. 2ttai?omu~ For we have pointed out that science £SJS"'SSt retains nothing of duration but simul- Spa^om the taneity, and nothing of motion itself inner world. but the position of the moving body, CONCLUSION 229 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 quali tative multiplicity, an absolute heterogeneity of elements which pass over into one an-/ other.
Now it is because they have neglected to make this necessary separation that one party has been The neglect to l^ to deny freedom and the other to " define it, and thereby, involuntarily, to denY it: to°- TheY ask in fact whether the act could or could not be to define it. 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 homo geneous 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, 230 TIME AND FREE WILL and that they are thus giving to duration at the same time two forms which are mutually exclu sive. 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 condi tion of previously confusing succession and simul taneity. All determinism will thus be refuted by experience, but every attempt to define freedom will open the way to determinism.
Inquiring then why this separation of duration and extensity, which science carries out so natur- TMS separa- a^Y m tne external world, demands such ~} an effort and rouses so much repugnance jj. when it is a question of inner states, guS?and w- we were n°t l°ng m 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 CONCLUSION 231 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.
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, Hence two dil- * A ferent selves: social representation. We reach the mental self: former by deep introspection, which (2) its spatial,, f and social re- leads us to grasp our inner states as DrGS°ntiitioii * only the former 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 juxta position in homogeneous space. But the mo ments 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 232 TIME AND FREE WILL freely is to recover possession of oneself, and to get back into pure duration.
Kant's great mistake was to take time as a homogeneous medium. He did not notice that Kant clung to real duration is made up of moments putedZe seuii inside one another, and that when it both66 seems to assume the form of a homogene- tfme6 ' ous 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 con sciousness, 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 CONCLUSION 233 CONCLUSION 233 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 dura tion, of which the moments are internal and hetero geneous to one another, and in which a cause cannot repeat its effect since it will never repeat itself.
In this very confusion of true duration with its symbol both the strength and the weakness Kant regarded °^ Kantianism reside. Kant imagines spans'3 ho- on tne one side " tnmgs in themselves," mogeneous. an(j on ^g other a homogeneous Time and Space, through which the " things in them selves," 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 234 TIME AND FREE 234 TIME AND FREE with a solid foundation, and of guaranteeing that phenomena, as phenomena, are adequately know- able. Indeed, we might set up these phenomena as absolute and do without the incomprehensible "things in themselves," were it not that the Prac tical Reason, the revealer of duty, came in, like the Platonic reminiscence, to warn us that the "thing in itself " exists, invisible but present. The con trolling factor in the whole of this theory is the very sharp distinction between the matter of consciousness and its form, between the homogene ous and the heterogeneous, and this vital dis tinction would probably never have been made unless time also had been regarded as a medium indifferent to what fills it.
But if time, as immediate consciousness per ceives it, were, like space, a homogeneous medium, But if time, as science would be able to deal with it, wStthomo- as ft can wfth sPace- Now we have S5nce*tcouid tried to prove that duration, as duration, deal with it an(j 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.
In the second place, in a duration assumed to CONCLUSION 235 be homogeneous, the same states could occur over again, causality would imply neces- II 5S sary 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 pre ferred 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.
But perhaps this distinction is too sharply drawn and perhaps the barrier is easier to cross than he supposed. For if perchance fd°WbyC°takiCntg^e rnoments of real duration, perceived toto accoSit011 ky an attentive consciousness, per meated 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 con stantly 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, 336 TIME AND FREE WILL So we have assumed the existence of a homo geneous Space and, with Kant, distinguished this with Kant, sPace fr°m tne matter which fills it.
With him we have admitted that homo- Stion *d geneous space is a " form of our sensibilpecn- j^-y ». anc[ we understand by this simply liar to man J j r j fhed waypaio? tnat otner minds, e.g. those of animals, social uie. although they perceive objects, do not distinguish them so clearly either from one another or from themselves. This intuition of a homogene ous 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.
Over against this homogeneous space we have put the self as perceived by an attentive con- But a con- sciousness, a living self, whose states, tioneis huertero- at once undistinguished and unstable, fStSn' oithe cannot be separated without changing toSyaSc isstate tne^r nature, and cannot receive a fixed StTrigMiJ form or be expressed in words without judged free, 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 CONCLUSION 237 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 suc cessive 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 associa tions being formed; and little by little, as our con sciousness thus imitates the process by which ner vous matter procures reflex actions, automatism will cover over freedom.1 It is just at this point 1 Renouvier has already spoken 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 238 238 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 deter mination 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 supra temporal domain of " things in them selves," whose mysterious threshold your conscious ness cannot cross. But, in our view, there is a third course which might be taken, namely, to carry 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 pro blem 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.
CONCLUSION 239 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 con crete 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 per meate one another, to symbolical duration, whose 240 TIME AND FREE WILL 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 per formed, 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.
INDEX Absolute, reality of space, 91; free dom not, 1 66; law of conscious ness, 207; Spinoza and, 208; knowledge of ourselves, 235.
Abstraction, implies homogeneous medium, 97; breaks up elements of idea, 134; and diagram of pro cess of reaching a decision, 177 f.; and Lord Kelvin's theory of matter, 206.
Acceleration, hypothetical, of mo tions of universe, 116 f., 193 ff.
Achilles, and tortoise, 73 f.
Act, not divisible like object, 112; free acts, 165 ff.; " possible acts," 174 ff- Act, of mind: all unity due to, 80 f.; neglected in empirical theory of space, 93 f.; nature of, 95.
Addition, of sensation - differences, 64, 65; process of, 80, 123, 226; implies multiplicity of parts, 85.
Advice, relation of, to freedom, 169.
Aeolus, cave of, 20.
Aesthetic feelings, n ff.; suggested, not caused, 17; stages in, 17.
Alceste, indignation of, 167.
Algebra, deals with results not pro cesses, 119.
Analysis, already visible in mental image, 84; distorts feelings, 132 f.; of a thing, not of a process, 219.
Anger, psychic element in, 29; and organic disturbance, 30.
Animals, ability to find their way through space, 96; space not so homogeneous for, 97; perceive duration as quality, 127; do not picture distinct external world, 138, 236.
Antecedents, same, and same conse quents, 199, 208.
Architecture, compared with rhythm, 15- Aristotle, distinguishes potential and actual, 121.
Arithmetic, splits up units, 84.
Art, and beauty, 14; object of, 14; and hypnotism, 14; the plastic arts, 15; suggesting, not expres sing feelings, 16; merit of work of, 17; yielding only sensations, 17; aim and method of artist, 18.
Artificial, reconstruction of concrete phenomenon, 163.
Aspect, twofold, of terms in a series, 124, 226; of the self, 128 ff.; of conscious states, 129 ff.; 137 ff.
Association, by contiguity, 136, 164; self cannot be constituted by, 139, 165, 226; associationist deter minism, 148, 155, 159; of ideas in interrupted conversation, 156; illustration from hypnotism, 157; illustration from deliberation, 158; involves defective conception of self, 159 ff., 165, 226; of end and movement, 160 f.; associations of smell, 161; its mistakes, 161 ff.; fits simple sensations, 164; cannot explain deeper states of self, 164; everyday acts obey laws of, 167 ff., 238.
Astronomy, measurement of time in, 107; prediction of celestial pheno mena, 117, 192 ff., 198.
Attention, and muscular tension, 27; Fechner on, 27; Ribot on, 27; and psychic tension, 28; and forma tion of number, 82, 84.
Bain, on nervous energy, 21, on theory of space, 93; on conflict of motives, 159. Beauty, feeling of, 14 ff.; in nature and art, 14 ff. Beliefs, adopted without reason, 135; compared to cell in organism, 135; some not properly assimilated, 136. Blix, experiments on temperature sense, 46. Body, movements of, as suggesting psychic state, 18; inclination of, in comparing pleasures, 38.
Causality, law of, 199, 201; as regular succession, 202 f.; common sense and meaning of, 203; as prefiguring of future phenomenon in present conditions, 204 ff.; not a necessary principle, 208; Spinoza on, 208; identity and, 209, 210; as necessary determination of phenomena means human freedom, 210; and second type of pre figuring, 211 f.; this leads to Leibniz, 213, this does not involve determinism, 214; involves two 242 INDEX 242 INDEX conceptions of duration, 215; con fusion of these two senses, 216; relation of external, as mathe matical, 219; relation of inner, as dynamic, 219; Kant ascribed same meaning to, in inner and outer world, 232.
Cause, external, and intensity, 4 f., 20, 42 ff., 72; introduced into effect, 42, 47, 54, 68; external, and separation of sensations, 109, 125; series of associations sometimes effect rather than, 156 ff.; in inner states no recurrence of same, 154, 199 f., 233; assertion that effect bound up with, 201; analysis of concept of, 201; self as free, 235.
Cell, in organism, beliefs compared to, 135.
Change, but not duration, attributed to external things, 227.
Character, freedom and, 172 f.; and prediction of future actions, 184.
Clocks, measurement of time by, 108 f.; perception of strokes of without expressly counting, 137.
Co-existence, number and relations of, 75 n.; can space result from relations of, 94; of past and pres ent only in consciousness, 112.
Cold, perception of, 46.
Colour, changes of hue and invariable colours, 5 1 white, grey and black, 53 f.; degrees of saturation, 54; intensity of, 54; colours of spec trum, 51, 54, 57; changes in sensa tion of, 57; can there be equi distant tints, 58.