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Title: Time and Free Will
       An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Author: Henri Bergson

Translator: F. L. Pogson

Release Date: March 27, 2018 [EBook #56852]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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TIME

AND FREE WILL

An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness

BY

HENRI BERGSON

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE

PROFESSOR AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE

Authorized Translation _by_

F. L. POGSON, M.A.

LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE, 44 AND 45 RATHBONE PLACE

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1913



Καὶ εἴ τις δὲ τὴν φύσίν ἔροιτο τίνος ἔνεκα ποίεῐ
εἰ τοῡ ἐρωτῶντος ἐθέλοι ἐπαΐειν καὶ λέγειν, εἴποι
ἄν "ἐχρῆν μὲν μὴ ἐρωτἂν, ἀλλὰ συνιέναι καὶ αὐτὸν
σιωπῇ, ὤσπερ ἐγὼ σιωπώ καὶ οὐκ εἴθισμαι λέγειν."

PLOTINUS.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE


Henri Louis Bergson was born in Paris, October 18, 1859. He entered the
École normale in 1878, and was admitted agrégé de philosophie in 1881
and docteur ès lettres in 1889. After holding professorships in various
provincial and Parisian lycées, he became maître de conférences at the
École normale supérieure in 1897, and since 1900 has been professor at
the Collège de France. In 1901 he became a member of the Institute on
his election to the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.

A full list of Professor Bergson's works is given in the appended
bibliography. In making the following translation of his _Essai sur les
données immédiates de la conscience_ I have had the great advantage of
his co-operation at every stage, and the aid which he has given has
been most generous and untiring. The book itself was worked out and
written during the years 1883 to 1887 and was originally published in
1889. The foot-notes in the French edition contain a certain number
of references to French translations of English works. In the present
translation I am responsible for citing these references from the
original English. This will account for the fact that editions are
sometimes referred to which have appeared subsequently to 1889. I have
also added fairly extensive marginal summaries and a full index.

In France the _Essai_ is already in its seventh edition. Indeed,
one of the most striking facts about Professor Bergson's works is
the extent to which they have appealed not only to the professional
philosophers, but also to the ordinary cultivated public. The method
which he pursues is not the conceptual and abstract method which has
been the dominant tradition in philosophy. For him reality is not to
be reached by any elaborate construction of thought: it is given in
immediate experience as a flux, a continuous process of becoming, to
be grasped by intuition, by sympathetic insight. Concepts break up
the continuous flow of reality into parts external to one another,
they further the interests of language and social life and are useful
primarily for practical purposes. But they give us nothing of the life
and movement of reality; rather, by substituting for this an artificial
reconstruction, a patchwork of dead fragments, they lead to the
difficulties which have always beset the intellectualist philosophy,
and which on its premises are insoluble. Instead of attempting a
solution in the intellectualist sense, Professor Bergson calls upon
his readers to put these broken fragments of reality behind them, to
immerse themselves in the living stream of things and to find their
difficulties swept away in its resistless flow.

In the present volume Professor Bergson first deals with the intensity
of conscious states. He shows that quantitative differences are
applicable only to magnitudes, that is, in the last resort, to space,
and that intensity in itself is purely qualitative. Passing then from
the consideration of separate conscious states to their multiplicity,
he finds that there are two forms of multiplicity: quantitative
or discrete multiplicity involves the intuition of space, but the
multiplicity of conscious states is wholly qualitative. This unfolding
multiplicity constitutes duration, which is a succession without
distinction, an interpenetration of elements so heterogeneous that
former states can never recur. The idea of a homogeneous and measurable
time is shown to be an artificial concept, formed by the intrusion of
the idea of space into the realm of pure duration. Indeed, the whole of
Professor Bergson's philosophy centres round his conception of _real
concrete duration_ and the specific _feeling_ of duration which our
consciousness has when it does away with convention and habit and gets
back to its natural attitude. At the root of most errors in philosophy
he finds a confusion between this _concrete duration_ and the _abstract
time_ which mathematics, physics, and even language and common sense,
substitute for it. Applying these results to the problem of free
will, he shows that the difficulties arise from taking up one's
stand _after_ the act has been performed, and applying the conceptual
method to it. From the point of view of the living, developing self
these difficulties are shown to be illusory, and freedom, though not
definable in abstract or conceptual terms, is declared to be one of the
clearest facts established by observation.

It is no doubt misleading to attempt to sum up a system of philosophy
in a sentence, but perhaps some part of the spirit of Professor
Bergson's philosophy may be gathered from the motto which, with his
permission, I have prefixed to this translation:--"If a man were to
inquire of Nature the reason of her creative activity, and if she
were willing to give ear and answer, she would say--'Ask me not, but
understand in silence, even as I am silent and am not wont to speak.'"

F. L. POGSON.

OXFORD,

_June,_ 1910.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


I. WORKS BY BERGSON.


(a) _Books._

Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit, (Thesis), Paris, 1889. Essai sur les
données immédiates de la conscience, Paris, 1889, 1910⁷.

Matière et Mémoire, Essai sur la relation du corps avec l'esprit,
Paris, 1896, 1910⁶.

Le Rire, Essai sur la signification du comique, Paris, 1900,
1910⁶. (First published in the _Revue de Paris,_ 1900, Vol.
I., pp. 512-545 and 759-791.)

L'Évolution créatrice, Paris, 1907, 1910⁶.

(b) _Articles._

La Spécialité. (Address at the distribution of prizes at the lycée of
Angers, Aug. 1882.)

De la simulation inconsciente dans l'état d'hypnotisme. _Revue
philosophique,_ Vol. 22, 1886, pp. 525-531. Le bon sens et les études
classiques. (Address at the distribution of prizes at the "Concours
général des lycées et collèges," 1895.)

Mémoire et reconnaissance. (_Revue philos._ Mar., Apr. 1896, pp.
225-248 and 380-399. Republished in _Matière et Mémoire._)

Perception et matière. (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ May 1896, pp.
257-277. Republished in _Matière et Mémoire._)

Note sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance à la loi
de causalité. (Lecture at the Philosophical Congress in Paris,
1900, published in the _Bibliothèque du Congrès International de
Philosophie;_ cf. _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,_ Sept. 1900, pp.
655 ff.)

Le Rêve. (Lecture at the _Institut psychologique international_:
published in the _Bulletin de l'Institut psych. intern._ May 1901; cf.
_Revue scientifique,_ 4e S., Vol. 15, June 8, 1901, pp. 705-713, and
_Revue de Philosophie,_ June 1901, pp. 486-488.)

Le Parallélisme psycho-physique et la métaphysique positive. _Bulletin
de la Société française de Philosophie,_ June 1901.

L'Effort intellectuel. _Revue philosophique,_ Jan. 1902. Introduction à
la métaphysique. _Revue de Mét. et de Mor._ Jan. 1903.

Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique. (Lecture at the Philosophical
Congress in Geneva, 1904, published in the _Revue de Mét. et de Mor._
Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908; see also pp. 1027-1036.)

L'Idée de néant, _Rev. philos._ Nov. 1906, pp. 449-466. (Part of Chap.
4 of _L'Évolution créatrice._)

Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de M. Félix Ravaisson-Mollien. (Lecture
before the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques: published in
the _Proceedings_ of the Academy, Vol. 25, pp. 1 ff. Paris, 1907.)

Le Souvenir du présent et la fausse reconnaissance. _Rev. philos._ Dec.
1908, pp. 561-593.

(c) _Miscellaneous._

_Lucrèce:_ Extraits ... avec une étude sur la poésie, la philosophie,
la physique, le texte et la langue de Lucrèce. Paris, 1884.

Principes de métaphysique et de psychologie d'après M. Paul Janet.
_Revue philos.,_ Vol. 44, Nov. 1897, pp. 525-551.

Collaboration au _Vocabulaire philosophique, Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de
Phil._ July 1902, Aug. 1907, Aug. 1908, Aug. 1909.

Remarques sur la place et le caractère de la Philosophie dans
l'Enseignement secondaire, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Feb.
1903, pp. 44 ff.

Remarques sur la notion de la liberté morale, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr.
de Phil._ Apr. 1903, pp. 101-103.

Remarques à propos de la philosophie sociale de Cournot, _Bulletin de
la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Aug. 1903, p. 229.

Préface de la _Psychologie rationnelle_ de M. Lubac, Paris, Alcan, 1904.

Sur sa relation à W. James, _Revue philosophique,_ Vol. 60, 1905, p.
229 f.

Sur sa théorie de la perception, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Philos._
Mar. 1905, pp. 94 ff.

Rapport sur le concours pour le prix Bordin, 1905, ayant pour sujet
Maine de Biran. (_Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences morales et
politiques,_ Vol. 25, pp. 809 ff., Paris, 1907.)

Rapport sur le concours pour le prix Le Dissez de Penanrun, 1907.
(_Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences morales et politiques,_ Vol. 26,
pp. 771 ff. Paris, 1909.)

Sur _l'Êvolution créatrice, Revue du Mois,_ Sept. 1907, p. 351.

A propos de l'évolution de l'intelligence géométrique, _Revue de Mét.
et de Mor._ Jan. 1908, pp. 28-33.

Sur l'influence de sa philosophie sur les élèves des lycées,
_Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Philos.,_ Jan. 1908, p. 21; cf. _L'Année
psychologique,_ 1908, pp. 229-231.

Réponse à une enquête sur la question religieuse (_La Question
religieuse_ par Frédéric Charpin, Paris, 1908).

Remarques sur l'organisation des Congrès de Philosophie. _Bulletin de
la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Jan. 1909, p. 11 f.

Préface à un volume de la collection _Les grands philosophes,_ (_G.
Tarde,_ par ses fils). Paris. Michaud, 1909.

Remarques à propos d'une thèse soutenue par M. Dwelshauvers
"L'inconscient dans la vie mentale." _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de
Phil.,_ Feb. 1910.

A propos d'un article de Mr. W. B. Pitkin intitule "James and Bergson."
_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. VII,
No. 14, July 7, 1910, pp. 385-388.


II. SELECT LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES DEALING IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITH
BERGSON AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.

(Arranged alphabetically under each language.)


_S. Alexander, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Mind,_ Oct. 1897, pp. 572-3).

_B. H. Bode, L'Évolution créatrice_, (_Philosophical Review_, 1908, pp.
84-89).

_W. Boyd, L'Évolution créatrice_, (_Review of Theology and Philosophy,_
Oct. 1907, pp. 249-251).

_H. Wildon Carr,_ Bergson's Theory of Knowledge, (_Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society,_ London, 1909. New Series, Vol. IX, pp. 41-60).

_H. Wildon Carr,_ Bergson's Theory of Instinct, (_Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society,_ London, 1910, N.S., Vol. X).

_H. Wildon Carr,_ The Philosophy of Bergson, (_Hibbert Journal,_ July
1910, pp. 873-883).

_W. J. Ferrar, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Commonwealth,_ Dec. 1909, pp.
364-367).

_H. N. Gardiner, Mémoire et reconnaissance,_ (_Psychological Review,_
1896, pp. 578-580).

_T. E. Hulme,_ The New Philosophy, (_New Age,_ July 1, 29, 1909).

_William James,_ A Pluralistic Universe, London, 1909, pp. 225-273.

_William James,_ The Philosophy of Bergson, (_Hibbert Journal,_ April
1909, pp. 562-577. Reprinted in _A Pluralistic Universe;_ see above).

_William James,_ Bradley or Bergson? (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. VII, No. 2, Jan. 20, 1910, pp.
29-33).

_H. M. Kallen,_ James, Bergson and Mr. Pitkin, (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ June 23, 1910, pp. 353-357).

_A. Lalande,_ Philosophy in France, 1907, (_Philosophical Review,_ May,
1908).

_J. A. Leighton,_ On Continuity and Discreteness, (_Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Apr. 28, 1910, pp.
231-238).

_T. Loveday, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Mind,_ July 1908, pp. 402-8).

_A. O. Lovejoy,_ The Metaphysician of the Life-Force, (_Nation,_ New
York, Sept. 30, 1909).

_A. Mitchell, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. V, No. 22, Oct. 22, 1908, pp.
603-612).

_W. Scott Palmer,_ Presence and Omnipresence, (_Contemporary Review,_
June 1908, pp. 734-742).

_W. Scott Palmer,_ Thought and Instinct, (_Nation,_ June 5, 1909).

_W. Scott Palmer,_ Life and the Brain, (_Contemporary Review,_ Oct.,
1909, pp. 474-484).

_W. B. Pitkin,_ James and Bergson; or, Who is against Intellect?
(_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Apr. 28,
1910, pp. 225-231).

_G. R. T. Ross,_ A New Theory of Laughter, (_Nation,_ Nov. 28, 1908).

_G. R. T. Ross,_ The Philosophy of Vitalism, (_Nation,_ Mar. 13, 1909)

_J. Royce,_ The Reality of the Temporal, (_Int. Journal of Ethics,_ Apr.
1910, pp. 257-271).

_G. M. Sauvage,_ The New Philosophy in France, (_Catholic University
Bulletin,_ Washington, Apr. 1906, Mar. 1908).

_Norman Smith,_ Subjectivism and Realism in Modern Philosophy,
(_Philosophical Review,_ Apr. 1908, pp. 138-148).

_G. F. Stout,_ Free Will and Determinism, (_Speaker,_ London, May 10,
1890).

_J. H. Tufts,_ Humor, (_Psychological Review,_ 1901, pp. 98-99).

_G. Tyrrell,_ Creative Evolution, (_Hibbert Journal,_ Jan. 1908, pp.
435-442).

_T. Whittaker, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Mind,_ Apr. 1890, pp. 292-3).


_G. Aimel,_ Individualisme et philosophie bergsonienne, (_Revue de
Philos.,_ June 1908).

_Balthasar,_ Le problème de Dieu d'après la philosophie nouvelle,
(_Revue néo-scolastique,_ Nov. 1907).

_G. Batault,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Mercure de France,_ Mar.
16, 1908, pp. 193-211).

_G. Belot,_ Une théorie nouvelle de la liberté, (_Revue philosophique,_
Vol. XXX, 1890, pp. 360-392).

_G. Belot,_ Un nouveau spiritualisme, _Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Rev.
philos._ Vol. XLIV, 1897, pp. 183-199).

_Jean Blum,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson et la poésie symboliste,
(_Mercure de France,_ Sept. 15, 1906).

_C. Bougie,_ Syndicalistes et Bergsoniens, (_Revue du Mois,_ Apr. 1909,
pp. 403-416).

_G. Cantecor,_ La philosophie nouvelle et la vie de l'esprit, (_Rev.
philos._ Mar. 1903, pp. 252-277).

_P. Cérésole,_ Le parallélisme psycho-physiologique et l'argument de M.
Bergson, (_Archives de Psychologie,_ Vol. V, Oct. 1905, pp. 112-120).

_A. Chaumeix,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Journal des Débats,_
May 24, 1908. Reprinted in _Pragmatisme et Modernisme,_ Paris, Alcan,
1909).

_A. Chaumeix,_ Les critiques du rationalisme, (_Revue Hebdomadaire,_
Paris, Jan. 1, 1910, pp. 1-33).

_A. Chide,_ Le mobilisme moderne, Paris, Alcan, 1908. (See also _Revue
philos.,_ Apr. 1908, Dec. 1909).

_C. Coignet,_ Kant et Bergson, (_Revue Chrétienne,_ July 1904).

_C. Coignet,_ La vie d'après M. Bergson, (_Bericht über den III
Kongress für Philosophie,_ Heidelberg, 1909, pp. 358-364).

_L. Constant,_ Cours de M. Bergson sur l'histoire de l'idée de temps,
(_Revue de Philos._ Jan. 1904, pp. 105-111. Summary of lectures).

_P. L. Couchoud,_ La métaphysique nouvelle, à propos de _Matière et
Mémoire_ de M. Bergson, (_Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,_ Mar.
1902, pp. 225-243).

_L. Couturat,_ La théorie du temps de Bergson, (_Rev. de Mét. et de
Mor._ 1896, pp. 646-669).

_Léon Cristiani,_ Le problème de Dieu et le pragmatisme, Paris, Bloud
et Cie., 1908.

_F. Le Dantec, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue du Mois,_ Aug. 1907.
Reprinted in _Science et Conscience,_ Paris, Flammarion, 1908).

_L. Dauriac, Le Rire,_ (_Revue philos._ Dec. 1900, pp. 665-670).

_V. Delbos, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ May 1897,
pp. 353-389).

_G. L. Duprat,_ La spatialité des faits psychiques, (_Rev. philos.,_
May 1907, pp. 492-501).

_G. Dwelshauvers,_ Raison et Intuition, Étude sur la philosophie de M.
Bergson, (_La Belgique artistique et littéraire,_ Nov. Dec. 1905, Apr.
1906).

_G. Dwelshauvers,_ M. Bergson et la méthode intuitive, (_Revue du
Mois,_ Sept. 1907, pp. 336-350).

_G. Dwelshauvers,_ De l'intuition dans l'acte de l'esprit, (_Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._ Jan. 1908, pp. 55-65).

_A. Farges,_ Le problème de la contingence d'après M. Bergson, (_Revue
pratique d'apologétique,_ Apr. 15, 1909).

_A. Farges,_ L'erreur fondamentale de la philosophie nouvelle, (_Revue
thomiste,_ May-June, 1909).

_A. Farges,_ Théorie fondamentale de l'acte, avec la critique de la
philosophie nouvelle de M. Bergson, Paris, Berche et Tralin, 1909.

_Alfred Fouillée,_ Le mouvement idéaliste et la réaction contre la
science positive, Paris, Alcan, 1896, pp. 198-206.

_Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange,_ Le sens commun, la philosophie de l'être et
les formules dogmatiques, Paris, Beauchesne, 1909.

_Jules de Gaultier,_ Le réalisme du continu, (_Revue philos.,_ Jan.
1910, pp. 39-64).

_René Gillouin,_ Henri Bergson, Paris, 1910. (A volume in the series
_Les grands philosophes_).

_A. Hollard, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Foi et Vie,_ Sept. 16, 1907, pp.
545-550).

_B. Jacob,_ La philosophie d'hier et celle d'aujourd'hui, (_Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._ Mar. 1898, pp. 170-201).

_G. Lechalas,_ Le nombre et le temps dans leurs rapports avec l'espace,
(_Ann. de Phil, chrét._ N.S. Vol. 22, 1890, pp. 516-540).

_G. Lechalas, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Ann. de Phil, chrét._ N.S. Vol.
36, 1897, pp. 149-164 and 314-334)

_A. Joussain,_ Romantisme et Religion, Paris, Alcan, 1910.

_Legendre,_ M. Bergson et son _Évolution créatrice_, (_Bulletin de la
Semaine,_ May 6, 1908).

_Lenoble, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue du Clergé français,_ Jan.,
1908).

_E. Le Roy,_ Science et Philosophie, (A Series of articles in the _Rev.
de Mét. et de Mor._ 1899 and 1900).

_L. Lévy-Bruhl, L'Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Rev. philos.,_ Vol. 29, 1890, pp. 519-538).

_G. H. Luquet,_ Idées générales de psychologie, Paris, 1906.

_J. Lux,_ Nos philosophes, M. Henri Bergson, (_Revue Bleue,_ Dec. 1,
1906).

_X. Moisant,_ La notion de multiplicité dans la philosophie de M.
Bergson, (_Revue de Philos.,_ June, 1902).

_X. Moisant,_ Dieu dans la philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Revue de
Philos.,_ May, 1905).

_G. Mondain,_ Remarques sur la théorie matérialiste, (_Foi et Vie,_
June 15, 1908, pp. 369-373).

_D. Parodi, Le Rire,_ par H. Bergson, (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Mar.
1901, pp. 224-236).

_T. M. Pègues L'Évolution créatrice_ (_Revue thomiste,_ May-June 1908,
pp. 137-163).

_C. Piat,_ De l'insuffisance des philosophies de l'intuition, Paris,
1908.

_Maurice Pradines,_ Principes de toute philosophie de l'action, Paris,
1910.

_G. Rageot, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Rev. philos.,_ July 1907).
Reprinted and enlarged in _Les savants et la philosophie,_ Paris,
Alcan, 1907.

_F. Rauh,_ La conscience du devenir, (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Nov.
1897, pp. 659-681, and Jan. 1898, pp. 38-60).

_F. Rauh,_ Sur la position du problème du libre arbitre, (_Rev. de Mét.
et de Mor._ Nov. 1904, pp. 977-1006).

_P. P. Raymond,_ La philosophie de l'intuition et la philosophie du
concept, (_Études franciscaines,_ June 1909).

_E. Seillière,_ L'Allemagne et la philosophie bergsonienne,
(_L'Opinion,_ July 3, 1909).

_G. Sorel, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Le Mouvement socialiste,_ Oct.
Dec. 1907, Jan. Mar. Apr. 1908).

_T. Steeg,_ Henri Bergson: Notice biographique avec portrait, (_Revue
universelle,_ Jan. 1902, pp. 15-16).

_J. de Tonquébec,_ La notion de la vérité dans la philosophie nouvelle,
Paris, 1908.

_J. de Tonquébec,_ Comment interpréter l'ordre du monde à propos du
dernier ouvrage de M. Bergson, Paris, Beauchesne, 1908.

_H. Trouche, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue de Philos._ Nov. 1908).

_H. Villassère, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Bulletin critique,_ Sept.
1908, pp. 392-411.)

_Tancrède de Visan,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson et le lyrisme
contemporain, (_Vers et Prose,_ Vol. XXI, 1910, pp. 125-140).

_L. Weber, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Sept.
1907, pp. 620-670).

_V. Wilbois,_ L'esprit positif, (A series of articles in the _Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._1900 and 1901).


_I. Benrubi,_ Henri Bergson, (_Die Zukunft,_ June 4, 1910).

_K. Bornhausen,_ Die Philosophie Henri Bergsons und ihre Bedeutung
für den Religionsbegriff, (_Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche,_
Tübingen, Jahrg. XX, Heft I 1910, pp. 39-77.)

_O. Braun, Materie und Gedächtnis,_ (_Archiv für die gesamte
Psychologie,_ Vol. 15, 1909, Heft 4, pp. 13-15).

_Hans Driesch,_ H. Bergson, der biologische Philosoph., (_Zeitschrift
für den Ausbau der Entwickelungslehre,_ Jahrg. II, Heft 1/2, Stuttgart,
1908).

_V. Eschbach,_ Henri Bergson, (_Kölnische Volkszeitung,_ Jan. 20, 1910).

_Giessler, Le Rêve,_ (_Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der
Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 29, 1902, p. 231).

_J. Goldstein,_ Henri Bergson und der Zeitlosigkeitsidealismus,
(_Frankfurter Zeitung,_ May 2, 1909).

_J. Goldstein,_ Henri Bergson und die Sozialwissenschaft, (_Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik,_ Bd. XXXI, Heft 1, July 1910, pp.
1-22).

_A. Gurewitsch,_ Die französische Metaphysik der Gegenwart (_Archiv für
system. Philos._ Bd. IX, Heft 4, Nov. 1903, pp. 462-490).

_Heymans, Le Rire,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol, u. Physiol. d.
Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 25, 1901, pp. 155-6).

_K. Joël,_ Neues Denken, (_Neue Rundschau,_ Apr. 1910, pp. 549-558).

_H. von Keyserling,_ Bergson, (_Allgemeine Zeitung,_ München, Nov. 28,
1908).

_R. Kroner,_ Henri Bergson, (_Logos,_ Bd. I, Heft 1, Tübingen, 1910).

_A. Lasson,_ H. Bergson, (_Deutsche Literaturzeitung_, May 28, 1910).

_R. Müller-Freienfels, Materie und Gedächtnis,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol.
u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane,_ May 1910, Vol. 56, Heft 1/2, pp. 126-129).

_Α. Pilzecker, Mémoire et reconnaissance,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol., u.
Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 13, 1897, pp. 229-232).

_Hans Prager,_ Henri Bergsons metaphysische Grundanschauung, (_Archiv
für system. Philos._ 1910, Bd. XVI, Heft 3, pp. 310-320).

_G. Seliber,_ Der Pragmatismus und seine Gegner, (_Archiv für system.
Philos._ 1909, pp. 287-298).

_A. Steenbergen,_ Henri Bergsons Intuitive Philosophie, Jena, 1909.

_W. Windelband,_ Preface to _Materie und Gedächtnis,_ Jena, 1908, pp.
I-XV.

_Th. Ziehen, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
philos. Kritik, Dec._ 1898, pp. 295-299).

_Roberto Ardigò,_ Una pretesa pregiudiziale contro il positivismo,
(_Rivista di Filosofia e Scienze affini,_ Jan.-Feb., Mar.-Apr. 1908.
Reprinted in Collected Works, Vol. 10).

_A. Crespi,_ La metafisica di H. Bergson, (_Coenobium,_ July-Aug. 1908).

_L. Ferri, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Rivista Italiana di Filosofia,_ Mar.-Apr. 1890, pp. 248-9).

_A. Levi,_ Sulle ultime forme dell' indeterminismo francese, Firenze,
Civelli, 1903.

_A. Levi,_ L'Indeterminismo nella filosofia francese contemporanea,
Firenze, Seeber, 1905.

_F. Masci,_ L'idealismo indeterminista, Napoli, 1899.

_E. Morselli,_ Un nuovo idealismo, (H. Bergson), Udine, Tosolini, 1900.

_I. Petrone,_ Sui limiti del determinismo scientifico, Modena, 1900;
Roma, 1903.

_G. Prezzolini,_ Del linguaggio come causa di errore, (H. Bergson),
Firenze, Spinelli, 1904.

_G. Prezzolini,_ La filosofia di H. Bergson, (in _La Teoria
Sindacalista,_ Napoli, Perrella, 1909, pp. 283-335).

_F. de Sarlo,_ Le correnti filosofiche del secolo XIX, (_Flegrea,_ III
6; Sept. 20, 1901, pp. 531-554)·

_G. Tarozzi,_ Della necessità nel fatto naturale ed umano, Torino,
Loescher, 1896-97.

_B. Varisco,_ La filosofia della contingenza, (_Rivista filosofica,_
Vol. VIII, 1905, pp. 1-37).

_B. Varisco,_ La Creazione, (_Rivista filosofica,_ Mar.-Apr. 1908, pp.
149-180).


_C. Antoniade,_ Filosofia lui Henri Bergson, (_Studii filosofice,_
Bucarest, 1908, Vol. II, pp. 161-192 and 259-278).

_F. Garcia Calderôn,_ Dos filosofos franceses, Bergson y Boutroux, (_El
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_E. Duprat,_ Estudios de Filosofia contemporanea: la Filosofia de H.
Bergson, (_Cultura Espanola,_ Madrid, 1908, pp. 185-202 and 567-584).

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_Michal Sobeski,_ H. Bergson, (_Kurier Warszawski,_ 20, stycznia,
1910).




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually
think in terms of space. That is to say, language requires us to
establish between our ideas the same sharp and precise distinctions,
the same discontinuity, as between material objects. This assimilation
of thought to things is useful in practical life and necessary in
most of the sciences. But it may be asked whether the insurmountable
difficulties presented by certain philosophical problems do not arise
from our placing side by side in space phenomena which do not occupy
space, and whether, by merely getting rid of the clumsy symbols round
which we are fighting, we might not bring the fight to an end. When
an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended, of
quality into quantity, has introduced contradiction into the very heart
of the question, contradiction must, of course, recur in the answer.

The problem which I have chosen is one which is common to metaphysics
and psychology, the problem of free will. What I attempt to prove
is that all discussion between the determinists and their opponents
implies a previous confusion of duration with extensity, of succession
with simultaneity, of quality with quantity: this confusion once
dispelled, we may perhaps witness the disappearance of the objections
raised against free will, of the definitions given of it, and, in a
certain sense, of the problem of free will itself. To prove this is the
object of the third part of the present volume: the first two chapters,
which treat of the conceptions of intensity and duration, have been
written as an introduction to the third.

H. BERGSON.

_February,_ 1888.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES

Quantitative differences applicable to magnitudes but not to
intensities, 1-4; Attempt to estimate intensities by objective
causes or atomic movements, 4-7; Different kinds of intensities, 7;
Deep-seated psychic states: desire, 8, hope, 9, joy and sorrow, 10;
Aesthetic feelings, 11-18: grace, 12, beauty, 14-18, music, poetry,
art, 15-18; Moral feelings, pity, 19; Conscious states involving
physical symptoms, 20: muscular effort, 21-26, attention and muscular
tension, 27-28; Violent emotions, 29-31: rage, 29, fear, 30;
Affective sensations, 32-39: pleasure and pain, 33-39, disgust, 36;
Representative sensations, 39-60: and external causes, 42, sensation
of sound, 43, intensity, pitch and muscular effort, 45-6, sensations
of heat and cold, 46-7, sensations of pressure and weight, 47-50,
sensation of light, 50-60, photometric experiments, 52-60, Delbœuf's
experiments, 56-60; Psychophysics, 60-72: Weber and Fechner, 61-65,
Delbœuf, 67-70, the mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes,
70-72; Intensity in (1) representative, (2) affective states, intensity
and multiplicity, 72-74.

_pp._1-74

CHAPTER II

THE MULTIPLICITY OF CONSCIOUS STATES

THE IDEA OF DURATION

Number and its units, 75-77, number and accompanying intuition of
space, 78-85; Two kinds of multiplicity, of material objects and
conscious states, 85-87, impenetrability of matter, 88-89, homogeneous
time and pure duration, 90-91; Space and its contents, 92, empirical
theories of space, 93-94, intuition of empty homogeneous medium
peculiar to man, 95-97, time as homogeneous medium reducible to
space, 98-99; Duration, succession and space, 100-104, pure duration,
105-106; Is duration measurable? 107-110; Is motion measurable?
111-112; Paradox of the Eleatics, 113-115; Duration and simultaneity,
115-116; Velocity and simultaneity, 117-119; Space alone homogeneous,
duration and succession belong to conscious mind, 120-121; Two kinds
of multiplicity, qualitative and quantitative, 121-123, superficial
psychic states invested with discontinuity of their external causes,
124-126, these eliminated, real duration is felt as a quality, 127-128;
The two aspects of the self, on the surface well-defined conscious
states, deeper down states which interpenetrate and form organic whole,
129-139, solidifying influence of language on sensation, 129-132,
analysis distorts the feelings, 132-134, deeper conscious states
forming a part of ourselves, 134-136; Problems soluble only by recourse
to the concrete and living self, 137-139.

_pp._ 75-139

CHAPTER III

THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES

FREE WILL

Dynamism and mechanism, 140-142; Two kinds of determinism, 142;
Physical determinism, 143-155: and molecular theory of matter, 143, and
conservation of energy, 144, if conservation universal, physiological
and nervous phenomena necessitated, but perhaps not conscious states,
145-148, but is principle of conversation universal? 149, it may
not apply to living beings and conscious states, 150-154, idea of
its universality depends on confusion between concrete duration and
abstract time, 154-155; Psychological determinism, 155-163: implies
associationist conception of mind, 155-158, this involves defective
conception of self, 159-163; The free act: freedom as expressing the
fundamental self, 165-170; Real duration and contingency, 172-182:
could our act have been different? 172-175, geometrical representation
of process of coming to a decision, 175-178, the fallacies to which
it leads determinists and libertarians, 179-183; Real duration and
prediction, 183-198: conditions of Paul's prediction of Peter's action
(1) being Peter (2) knowing already his final act, 184-189, the
three fallacies involved, 190-192, astronomical prediction depends
on hypothetical acceleration of movements, 193-195, duration cannot
be thus accelerated, 196-198; Real duration and causality, 199-221:
the law "same antecedents, same consequents," 199-201, causality as
regular succession, 202-203, causality as prefiguring: two kinds (1)
prefiguring as mathematical pre-existence; implies non-duration, but
we _endure_ and therefore may be free, 204-210, (2) prefiguring as
having idea of future act to be realized by effort; does not involve
determinism, 211-214, determinism results from confusing these two
senses, 215-218; Freedom real but indefinable, 219-221.

_pp._140-221

CONCLUSION

States of self perceived through forms borrowed from external world,
223; Intensity as quality, 225; Duration as qualitative multiplicity,
226; No duration in the external world, 227; Extensity and duration
must be separated, 229; Only the fundamental self free, 231; Kant's
mistaken idea of time as homogeneous, 232, hence he put the self which
is free outside both space and time, 233; Duration is heterogeneous,
relation of psychic state to act is unique, and act is free, 235-240.

_pp._ 222-240

INDEX




CHAPTER I


THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES

[Sidenote: Can there be quantitative differences in conscious states?]

It is usually admitted that states of consciousness, sensations,
feelings, passions, efforts, are capable of growth and diminution; we
are even told that a sensation can be said to be twice, thrice, four
times as intense as another sensation of the same kind. This latter
thesis, which is maintained by psychophysicists, we shall examine
later; but even the opponents of psychophysics do not see any harm
in speaking of one sensation as being more intense than another, of
one effort as being greater than another, and in thus setting up
differences of quantity between purely internal states. Common sense,
moreover, has not the slightest hesitation in giving its verdict on
this point; people say they are more or less warm, or more or less sad,
and this distinction of more and less, even when it is carried over
to the region of subjective facts and unextended objects, surprises
nobody. But this involves a very obscure point and a much more
important problem than is usually supposed.

When we assert that one number is greater than another number or one
body greater than another body, we know very well what we mean.

[Sidenote: Such differences applicable to magnitudes but not to
intensities.]

For in both cases we allude to unequal spaces, as shall be shown in
detail a little further on, and we call that space the greater which
contains the other. But how can a more intense sensation contain one of
less intensity? Shall we say that the first implies the second, that
we reach the sensation of higher intensity only on condition of having
first passed through the less intense stages of the same sensation, and
that in a certain sense we are concerned, here also, with the relation
of container to contained? This conception of intensive magnitude
seems, indeed, to be that of common sense, but we cannot advance it
as a philosophical explanation without becoming involved in a vicious
circle. For it is beyond doubt that, in the natural series of numbers,
the later number exceeds the earlier, but the very possibility of
arranging the numbers in ascending order arises from their having
to each other relations of container and contained, so that we feel
ourselves able to explain precisely in what sense one is greater than
the other. The question, then, is how we succeed in forming a series of
this kind with intensities, which cannot be superposed on each other,
and by what sign we recognize that the members of this series increase,
for example, instead of diminishing: but this always comes back to the
inquiry, why an intensity can be assimilated to a magnitude.

[Sidenote: Alleged distinction between two kinds of quantity: extensive
and intensive magnitude.]

It is only to evade the difficulty to distinguish, as is usually done,
between two species of quantity, the first extensive and measurable,
the second intensive and not admitting of measure, but of which it can
nevertheless be said that it is greater or less than another intensity.
For it is recognized thereby that there is something common to these
two forms of magnitude, since they are both termed magnitudes and
declared to be equally capable of increase and diminution. But, from
the point of view of magnitude, what can there be in common between
the extensive and the intensive, the extended and the unextended? If,
in the first case, we call that which contains the other the greater
quantity, why go on speaking of quantity and magnitude when there
is no longer a container or a contained? If a quantity can increase
and diminish, if we perceive in it, so to speak, the _less_ inside
the _more,_ is not such a quantity on this very account divisible,
and thereby extended? Is it not then a contradiction to speak of an
inextensive quantity? But yet common sense agrees with the philosophers
in setting up a pure intensity as a magnitude, just as if it were
something extended. And not only do we use the same word, but whether
we think of a greater intensity or a greater extensity, we experience
in both cases an analogous impression; the terms "greater" and "less"
call up in both cases the same idea. If we now ask ourselves in what
does this idea consist, our consciousness still offers us the image
of a container and a contained. We picture to ourselves, for example,
a greater intensity of effort as a greater length of thread rolled
up, or as a spring which, in unwinding, will occupy a greater space.
In the idea of intensity, and even in the word which expresses it,
we shall find the image of a present contraction and consequently a
future expansion, the image of something virtually extended, and, if
we may say so, of a compressed space. We are thus led to believe that
we translate the intensive into the extensive, and that we compare
two intensities, or at least express the comparison, by the confused
intuition of a relation between two extensities. But it is just the
nature of this operation which it is difficult to determine.

[Sidenote: Attempt to distinguish intensities by objective causes. But
we judge of intensity without knowing magnitude or nature of the cause.]

The solution which occurs immediately to the mind, once it has entered
upon this path, consists in defining the intensity of a sensation,
or of any state whatever of the ego, by the number and magnitude of
the objective, and therefore measurable, causes which have given rise
to it. Doubtless, a more intense sensation of light is the one which
has been obtained, or is obtainable, by means of a larger number of
luminous sources, provided they be at the same distance and identical
with one another. But, in the immense majority of cases, we decide
about the intensity of the effect without even knowing the nature of
the cause, much less its magnitude: indeed, it is the very intensity
of the effect which often leads us to venture an hypothesis as to the
number and nature of the causes, and thus to revise the judgment of
our senses, which at first represented them as insignificant. And it
is no use arguing that we are then comparing the actual state of the
ego with some previous state in which the cause was perceived in its
entirety at the same time as its effect was experienced. No doubt this
is our procedure in a fairly large number of cases; but we cannot
then explain the differences of intensity which we recognize between
deep-seated psychic phenomena, the cause of which is within us and
not outside. On the other hand, we are never so bold in judging the
intensity of a psychic state as when the subjective aspect of the
phenomenon is the only one to strike us, or when the external cause to
which we refer it does not easily admit of measurement. Thus it seems
evident that we experience a more intense pain at the pulling out of a
tooth than of a hair; the artist knows without the possibility of doubt
that the picture of a master affords him more intense pleasure than
the signboard of a shop; and there is not the slightest need ever to
have heard of forces of cohesion to assert that we expend less effort
in bending a steel blade than a bar of iron. Thus the comparison of
two intensities is usually made without the least appreciation of the
number of causes, their mode of action or their extent.

[Sidenote: Attempt to distinguish intensities by atomic movements.
But it is the sensation which is given in consciousness, and not the
movement.]

There is still room, it is true, for an hypothesis of the same nature,
but more subtle. We know that mechanical, and especially kinetic,
theories aim at explaining the visible and sensible properties of
bodies by _well_ defined movements of their ultimate parts, and many of
us foresee the time when the intensive differences of qualities, that
is to say, of our sensations, will be reduced to extensive differences
between the changes taking place behind them. May it not be maintained
that, without knowing these theories, we have a vague surmise of them,
that behind the more intense sound we guess the presence of ampler
vibrations which are propagated in the disturbed medium, and that it
is with a reference to this mathematical relation, precise in itself
though confusedly perceived, that we assert the higher intensity of a
particular sound? Without even going so far, could it not be laid down
that every state of consciousness corresponds to a certain disturbance
of the molecules and atoms of the cerebral substance, and that the
intensity of a sensation measures the amplitude, the complication or
the extent of these molecular movements? This last hypothesis is at
least as probable as the other, but it no more solves the problem.
For, quite possibly, the intensity of a sensation bears witness to a
more or less considerable work accomplished in our organism; but it
is the sensation which is given to us in consciousness, and not this
mechanical work. Indeed, it is by the intensity of the sensation that
we judge of the greater or less amount of work accomplished: intensity
then remains, at least apparently, a property of sensation. And still
the same question recurs: why do we say of a higher intensity that it
is greater? Why do we think of a greater quantity or a greater space?


[Sidenote: Different kinds of intensities. (1) deep-seated psychic
statese (2)muscular effort. Intensity is more easily definable in the
former case.]

Perhaps the difficulty of the problem lies chiefly in the fact that
we call by the same name, and picture to ourselves in the same way,
intensities which are very different in nature, e.g. the intensity of a
feeling and that of a sensation or an effort.

The effort is accompanied by a muscular sensation, and the sensations
themselves are connected with certain physical conditions which
probably count for something in the estimate of their intensity: we
have here to do with phenomena which take place on the surface of
consciousness, and which are always connected, as we shall see further
on, with the perception of a movement or of an external object. But
certain states of the soul seem to us, rightly or wrongly, to be
self-sufficient, such as deep joy or sorrow, a reflective passion or an
aesthetic emotion. Pure intensity ought to be more easily definable in
these simple cases, where no extensive element seems to be involved. We
shall see, in fact, that it is reducible here to a certain quality or
shade which spreads over a more or less considerable mass of psychic
states, or, if the expression be preferred, to the larger or smaller
number of simple states which make up the fundamental emotion.

[Sidenote: Take, for example, the progress of a desire.]

For example, an obscure desire gradually becomes a deep passion. Now,
you will see that thee feeble intensity of this desire consisted at
first in its appearing to be isolated and, as it were, foreign to the
remainder of your inner life. But little by little it permeates a
larger number of psychic elements, tingeing them, so to speak, with
its own colour: and lo! your outlook on the whole of your surroundings
seems now to have changed radically. How do you become aware of a deep
passion, once it has taken hold of you, if not by perceiving that
the same objects no longer impress you in the same manner? All your
sensations and all your ideas seem to brighten up: it is like childhood
back again. We experience something of the kind in certain dreams, in
which we do not imagine anything out of the ordinary, and yet through
which there resounds an indescribable note of originality. The fact is
that, the further we penetrate into the depths of consciousness, the
less right we have to treat psychic phenomena as things which are set
side by side. When it is said that an object occupies a large space
in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand
by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand
perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them,
although it does not itself come into view. But this wholly dynamic
way of looking at things is repugnant to the reflective consciousness,
because the latter delights in clean cut distinctions, which are
easily expressed in words, and in things with well-defined outlines,
like those which are perceived in space. It will assume then that,
everything else remaining identical, such and such a desire has gone up
a scale of magnitudes, as though it were permissible still to speak of
magnitude where there is neither multiplicity nor space! But just as
consciousness (as will be shown later on) concentrates on a given point
of the organism the increasing number of muscular contractions which
take place on the surface of the body, thus converting them into one
single feeling of effort, of growing intensity, so it will hypostatize
under the form of a growing desire the gradual alterations which take
place in the confused heap of co-existing psychic states. But that is a
change of quality rather than of magnitude.

What makes hope such an intense pleasure is the fact that the future,
which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under
a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible. Even
if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to
give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal. The idea of
the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more
fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in
hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

[Sidenote: The emotions of joy and sorrow. Their successive stages
correspond to qualitative changes in the whole of our psychic states.]

Let us try to discover the nature of an increasing intensity of joy or
sorrow in the exceptional cases where no physical symptom intervenes.
Neither inner joy nor passion is an isolated inner state which at
first occupies a corner of the soul and gradually spreads. At its
lowest level it is very like a turning of our states of consciousness
towards the future. Then, as if their weight were diminished by this
attraction, our ideas and sensations succeed one another with greater
rapidity; our movements no longer cost us the same effort. Finally,
in cases of extreme joy, our perceptions and memories become tinged
with an indefinable quality, as with a kind of heat or light, so
novel that now and then, as we stare at our own self, we wonder how
it can really exist. Thus there are several characteristic forms of
purely inward joy, all of which are successive stages corresponding to
qualitative alterations in the whole of our psychic states. But the
number of states which are concerned with each of these alterations
is more or less considerable, and, without explicitly counting them,
we know very well whether, for example, our joy pervades all the
impressions which we receive in the course of the day or whether any
escape from its influence. We thus set up points of division in the
interval which separates two successive forms of joy, and this gradual
transition from one to the other makes them appear in their turn as
different intensities of one and the same feeling, which is thus
supposed to change in magnitude. It could be easily shown that the
different degrees of sorrow also correspond to qualitative changes.
Sorrow begins by being nothing more than a facing towards the past, an
impoverishment of our sensations and ideas, as if each of them were now
contained entirely in the little which it gives out, as if the future
were in some way stopped up. And it ends with an impression of crushing
failure, the effect of which is that we aspire to nothingness, while
every new misfortune, by making us understand better the uselessness of
the struggle, causes us a bitter pleasure.

[Sidenote: The aesthetic feelings. Their increasing intensities are
really different feelings.]

The aesthetic feelings offer us a still more striking example of this
progressive stepping in of new elements, which can be detected in the
fundamental emotion and which seem to increase its magnitude, although
in reality they do nothing more than alter its nature. Let us consider
the simplest of them, the feeling of grace. At first it is only the
perception of a certain ease, a certain facility in the outward
movements. And as those movements are easy which prepare the way for
others, we are led to find a superior ease in the movements which can
be foreseen, in the present attitudes in which future attitudes are
pointed out and, as it were, prefigured. If jerky movements are wanting
in grace, the reason is that each of them is self-sufficient and does
not announce those which are to follow. If curves are more graceful
than broken lines, the reason is that, while a curved line changes its
direction at every moment, every new direction is indicated in the
preceding one. Thus the perception of ease in motion passes over into
the pleasure of mastering the flow of time and of holding the future
in the present. A third element comes in when the graceful movements
submit to a rhythm and are accompanied by music. For the rhythm and
measure, by allowing us to foresee to a still greater extent the
movements of the dancer, make us believe that we now control them. As
we guess almost the exact attitude which the dancer is going to take,
he seems to obey us when he really takes it: the regularity of the
rhythm establishes a kind of communication between him and us, and the
periodic returns of the measure are like so many invisible threads by
means of which we set in motion this imaginary puppet. Indeed, if it
stops for an instant, our hand in its impatience cannot refrain from
making a movement, as though to push it, as though to replace it in
the midst of this movement, the rhythm of which has taken complete
possession of our thought and will. Thus a kind of physical sympathy
enters into the feeling of grace. Now, in analysing the charm of this
sympathy, you will find that it pleases you through its affinity
with moral sympathy, the idea of which it subtly suggests. This last
element, in which the others are merged after having in a measure
ushered it in, explains the irresistible attractiveness of grace.
We could hardly make out why it affords us such pleasure if it were
nothing but a saving of effort, as Spencer maintains.[1] But the truth
is that in anything which we call very graceful we imagine ourselves
able to detect, besides the lightness which is a sign of mobility,
some suggestion of a possible movement towards ourselves, of a virtual
and even nascent sympathy. It is this mobile sympathy, always ready
to offer itself, which is just the essence of higher grace. Thus the
increasing intensities of aesthetic feeling are here resolved into as
many different feelings, each one of which, already heralded by its
predecessor, becomes perceptible in it and then completely eclipses
it. It is this qualitative progress which we interpret as a change of
magnitude, because we like simple thoughts and because our language is
ill-suited to render the subtleties of psychological analysis.

[Sidenote: The feeling of beauty: art puts to sleep our active and
resistant powers and makes us responsive to suggestion.]

To understand how the feeling of the beautiful itself admits of
degrees, we should have to submit it to a minute analysis. Perhaps
the difficulty which we experience in defining: it is largely owing to
the fact that we look upon the beauties of nature as anterior to those
of art: the processes of art are thus supposed to be nothing more than
means by which the artist expresses the beautiful, and the essence of
the beautiful remains unexplained. But we might ask ourselves whether
nature is beautiful otherwise than through meeting by chance certain
processes of our art, and whether, in a certain sense, art is not prior
to nature. Without even going so far, it seems more in conformity
with the rules of a sound method to study the beautiful first in the
works in which it has been produced by a conscious effort, and then
to pass on by imperceptible steps from art to nature, which may be
looked upon as an artist in its own way. By placing ourselves at this
point of view, we shall perceive that the object of art is to put to
sleep the active or rather resistant powers of our personality, and
thus to bring us into a state of perfect responsiveness, in which
we realize the idea that is suggested to us and sympathize with the
feeling that is expressed. In the processes of art we shall find, in a
weakened form, a refined and in some measure spiritualized version of
the processes commonly used to induce the state of hypnosis. Thus, in
music, the rhythm and measure suspend the normal flow of our sensations
and ideas by causing our attention to swing to and fro between fixed
points, and they take hold of us with such force that even the faintest
imitation of a groan will suffice to fill us with the utmost sadness.
If musical sounds affect us more powerfully than the sounds of nature,
the reason is that nature confines itself to _expressing_ feelings,
whereas music _suggests_ them to us. Whence indeed comes the charm of
poetry? The poet is he with whom feelings develop into images, and the
images themselves into words which translate them while obeying the
laws of rhythm. In seeing these images pass before our eyes we in our
turn experience the feeling which was, so to speak, their emotional
equivalent: but we should never realize these images so strongly
without the regular movements of the rhythm by which our soul is lulled
into self-forgetfulness, and, as in a dream, thinks and sees with the
poet. The plastic arts obtain an effect of the same kind by the fixity
which they suddenly impose upon life, and which a physical contagion
carries over to the attention of the spectator. While the works of
ancient sculpture express faint emotions which play upon them like a
passing breath, the pale immobility of the stone causes the feeling
expressed or the movement just begun to appear as if they were fixed
for ever, absorbing our thought and our will in their own eternity. We
find in architecture, in the very midst of this startling immobility,
certain effects analogous to those of rhythm. The symmetry of form,
the indefinite repetition of the same architectural motive, causes
our faculty of perception to oscillate between the same and the same
again, and gets rid of those customary incessant changes which in
ordinary life bring us back without ceasing to the consciousness of
our personality: even the faint suggestion of an idea will then be
enough to make the idea fill the whole of our mind. Thus art aims at
impressing feelings on us rather than expressing them; it suggests
them to us, and willingly dispenses with the imitation of nature when
it finds some more efficacious means. Nature, like art, proceeds by
suggestion, but does not command the resources of rhythm. It supplies
the deficiency by the long comradeship, based on influences received
in common by nature and by ourselves, of which the effect is that the
slightest indication by nature of a feeling arouses sympathy in our
minds, just as a mere gesture on the part of the hypnotist is enough to
force the intended suggestion upon a subject accustomed to his control.
And this sympathy is shown in particular when nature displays to us
beings of _normal_ proportions, so that our attention is distributed
equally over all the parts of the figure without being fixed on any one
of them: our perceptive faculty then finds itself lulled and soothed by
this harmony, and nothing hinders any longer the free play of sympathy,
which is ever ready to come forward as soon as the obstacle in its path
is removed.

[Sidenote: Stages in the aesthetic emotion.]

It follows from this analysis that the feeling of the beautiful is
no specific feeling, but that every feeling experienced by us will
assume an aesthetic character, provided that it has been _suggested,_
and not _caused._ It will now be understood why the aesthetic emotion
seems to us to admit of degrees of intensity, and also of degrees of
elevation. Sometimes the feeling which is suggested scarcely makes a
break in the compact texture of psychic phenomena of which our history
consists; sometimes it draws our attention from them, but not so that
they become lost to sight; sometimes, finally, it puts itself in their
place, engrosses us and completely monopolizes our soul. There are
thus distinct phases in the progress of an aesthetic feeling, as in
the state of hypnosis; and these phases correspond less to variations
of degree than to differences of state or of nature. But the merit
of a work of art is not measured so much by the power with which the
suggested feeling takes hold of us as by the richness of this feeling
itself: in other words, besides degrees of intensity we instinctively
distinguish degrees of depth or elevation. If this last concept be
analysed, it will be seen that the feelings and thoughts which the
artist suggests to us express and sum up a more or less considerable
part of his history. If the art which gives only sensations is an
inferior art, the reason is that analysis often fails to discover in
a sensation anything beyond the sensation itself. But the greater
number of emotions are instinct with a thousand sensations, feelings
or ideas which pervade them: each one is then a state unique of its
kind and indefinable, and it seems that we should have to re-live the
life of the subject who experiences it if we wished to grasp it in
its original complexity. Yet the artist aims at giving us a share in
this emotion, so rich, so personal, so novel, and at enabling us to
experience what he cannot make us understand. This he will bring about
by choosing, among the outward signs of his emotions, those which our
body is likely to imitate mechanically, though slightly, as soon as it
perceives them, so as to transport us all at once into the indefinable
psychological state which called them forth. Thus will be broken down
the barrier interposed by time and space between his consciousness and
ours: and the richer in ideas and the more pregnant with sensations
and emotions is the feeling within whose limits the artist has brought
us, the deeper and the higher shall we find the beauty thus expressed.
The successive intensities of the aesthetic feeling thus correspond
to changes of state occurring in us, and the degrees of depth to the
larger or smaller number of elementary psychic phenomena which we dimly
discern in the fundamental emotion.

[Sidenote: The moral feelings. Pity. Its increasing intensity is a
qualitative progress.]

The moral feelings might be studied in the same way. Let us take pity
as an example. It consists in the first place in putting oneself
mentally in the place of others, in suffering their pain. But if it
were nothing more, as some have maintained, it would inspire us with
the idea of avoiding the wretched rather than helping them, for pain
is naturally abhorrent to us. This feeling of horror may indeed be at
the root of pity; but a new element soon comes in, the need of helping
our fellow-men and of alleviating their suffering. Shall we say with La
Rochefoucauld that this so-called sympathy is a calculation, "a shrewd
insurance against evils to come"? Perhaps a dread of some future evil
to ourselves does hold a place in our compassion for other people's
evil. These however are but lower forms of pity. True pity consists not
so much in fearing suffering as in desiring it. The desire is a faint
one and we should hardly wish to see it realized; yet we form it in
spite of ourselves, as if Nature were committing some great injustice
and it were necessary to get rid of all suspicion of complicity
with her. The essence of pity is thus a need for self-abasement, an
aspiration downwards. This painful aspiration nevertheless has a
charm about it, because it raises us in our own estimation and makes
us feel superior to those sensuous goods from which our thought is
temporarily detached. The increasing intensity of pity thus consists in
a qualitative progress, in a transition from repugnance to fear, from
fear to sympathy, and from sympathy itself to humility.


[Sidenote: Conscious states connected with external causes or involving
psychical symptoms.]

We do not propose to carry this analysis any further. The psychic
states whose intensity we have just defined are deep-seated states
which do not seem to have any close relation to their external cause
or to involve the perception of muscular contraction. But such states
are rare. There is hardly any passion or desire, any joy or sorrow,
which is not accompanied by physical symptoms; and, where these
symptoms occur, they probably count for something in the estimate
of intensities. As for the sensations properly so called, they are
manifestly connected with their external cause, and though the
intensity of the sensation cannot be defined by the magnitude of its
cause, there undoubtedly exists some relation between these two terms.
In some of its manifestations consciousness even appears to spread
outwards, as if intensity were being developed into extensity, e.g. in
the case of muscular effort. Let us face this last phenomenon at once:
we shall thus be transported at a bound to the opposite extremity of
the series of psychic phenomena.


[Sidenote: Muscular effort seems at first sight to be quantitative.]

If there is a phenomenon which seems to be presented immediately to
consciousness under the form of quantity or at least of magnitude, it
is undoubtedly muscular effort. We picture to our minds a psychic force
imprisoned in the soul like the winds in the cave of Aeolus, and only
waiting for an opportunity to burst forth: our will is supposed to
watch over this force and from time to time to open a passage for it,
regulating the outflow by the effect which it is desired to produce. If
we consider the matter carefully, we shall see that this somewhat crude
conception of effort plays a large part in our belief in intensive
magnitudes. Muscular force, whose sphere of action is space and which
manifests itself in phenomena admitting of measure, seems to us to
have existed previous to its manifestations, but in smaller volume,
and, so to speak, in a compressed state: hence we do not hesitate to
reduce this volume more and more, and finally we believe that we can
understand how a purely psychic state, which does not occupy space,
can nevertheless possess magnitude. Science, too, tends to strengthen
the illusion of common sense with regard to this point. Bain, for
example, declares that "the sensibility accompanying muscular movement
coincides with the _outgoing_ stream of nervous energy:"[2] it is thus
just the emission of nervous force which consciousness perceives.
Wundt also speaks of a sensation, central in its origin, accompanying
the voluntary innervation of the muscles, and quotes the example
of the paralytic "who has a very distinct sensation of the force
which he employs in the effort to raise his leg, although it remains
motionless."[3] Most of the authorities adhere to this opinion,
which would be the unanimous view of positive science were it not
that several years ago Professor William James drew the attention of
physiologists to certain phenomena which had been but little remarked,
although they were very remarkable.

[Sidenote: The feeling of effort. We are conscious not of an
expenditure of force but of the resulting muscular movement.]

When a paralytic strives to raise his useless limb, he certainly does
not execute this movement, but, with or without his will, he executes
another. Some movement is carried out somewhere: otherwise there is
no sensation of effort.[4] Vulpian had already called attention to
the fact that if a man affected with hemiplegia is told to clench his
paralysed fist, he unconsciously carries out this action with the
fist which is not affected. Ferrier described a still more curious
phenomenon.[5] Stretch out your arm while slightly bending your
forefinger, as if you were going to press the trigger of a pistol;
without moving the finger, without contracting any muscle of the hand,
without producing any apparent movement, you will yet be able to feel
that you are expending energy. On a closer examination, however,
you will perceive that this sensation of effort coincides with the
fixation of the muscles of your chest, that you keep your glottis
closed and actively contract your respiratory muscles. As soon as
respiration resumes its normal course the consciousness of effort
vanishes, unless you really move your finger. These facts already
seemed to show that we are conscious, not of an expenditure of force,
but of the movement of the muscles which results from it. The new
feature in Professor James's investigation is that he has verified
the hypothesis in the case of examples which seemed to contradict it
absolutely. Thus when the external rectus muscle of the right eye is
paralysed, the patient tries in vain to turn his eye towards the right;
yet objects seem to him to recede towards the right, and since the act
of volition has produced no effect, it follows, said Helmholtz,[6]
that he is conscious of the effort of volition. But, replies Professor
James, no account has been taken of what goes on in the other eye. This
remains covered during the experiments; nevertheless it moves and there
is not much trouble in proving that it does. It is the movement of the
left eye, perceived by consciousness, which produces the sensation of
effort together with the impression that the objects perceived by the
right eye are moving. These and similar observations lead Professor
James to assert that the feeling of effort is centripetal and not
centrifugal. We are not conscious of a force which we are supposed to
launch upon our organism: our feeling of muscular energy at work "is
a complex afferent sensation, which comes from contracted muscles,
stretched ligaments, compressed joints, an immobilized chest, a closed
glottis, a knit brow, clenched jaws," in a word, from all the points of
the periphery where the effort causes an alteration.

[Sidenote: Intensity of feeling of effort proportional to extent of our
body affected.]

It is not for us to take a side in the dispute. After all, the question
with which we have to deal is not whether the feeling of effort comes
from the centre or the periphery, but in what does our perception of
its intensity exactly consist? Now, it is sufficient to observe oneself
attentively to reach a conclusion on this point which Professor James
has not formulated, but which seems to us quite in accord with the
spirit of his teaching. We maintain that the more a given effort seems
to us to increase, the greater is the number of muscles which contract
in sympathy with it, and that the apparent consciousness of a greater
intensity of effort at a given point of the organism is reducible,
in reality, to the perception of a larger surface of the body being
affected.

[Sidenote: Our consciousness of an increase of muscular effort consists
in the perception of (1) a greater number of peripheral sensations (2)
a qualitative change in some of them.]

Try, for example, to clench the fist with increasing force. You will
have the impression of a sensation of effort entirely localized in
your hand and running up a scale of magnitudes. In reality, what you
experience in your hand remains the same, but the sensation which was
at first localized there has affected your arm and ascended to the
shoulder; finally, the other arm stiffens, both legs do the same, the
respiration is checked; it is the whole body which is at work. But
you fail to notice distinctly all these concomitant movements unless
you are warned of them: till then you thought you were dealing with
a single state of consciousness which changed in magnitude. When you
press your lips more and more tightly against one another, you believe
that you are experiencing in your lips one and the same sensation which
is continually increasing in strength: here again further reflection
will show you that this sensation remains identical, but that certain
muscles of the face and the head and then of all the rest of the body
have taken part in the operation. You felt this gradual encroachment,
this increase of the surface affected, which is in truth a change of
quantity; but, as your attention was concentrated on your closed lips,
you localized the increase there and you made the psychic force there
expended into a magnitude, although it possessed no extensity. Examine
carefully somebody who is lifting heavier and heavier weights: the
muscular contraction gradually spreads over his whole body. As for the
special sensation which he experiences in the arm which is at work,
it remains constant for a very long time and hardly changes except
in quality, the weight becoming at a certain moment fatigue, and the
fatigue pain. Yet the subject will imagine that he is conscious of a
continual increase in the psychic force flowing into his arm. He will
not recognize his mistake unless he is warned of it, so inclined is
he to measure a given psychic state by the conscious movements which
accompany it! From these facts and from many others of the same kind we
believe we can deduce the following conclusion: our consciousness of an
increase of muscular effort is reducible to the twofold perception of
a greater number of peripheral sensations, and of a qualitative change
occurring in some of them.

[Sidenote: The same definition of intensity applies to superficial
efforts, deep-seated feelings and states intermediate between the two.]

We are thus led to define the intensity of a superficial effort in
the same way as that of a cases there is a qualitative progress and
an increasing complexity, indistinctly perceived. But consciousness,
accustomed to think in terms of space and to translate its thoughts
into words, will denote the feeling by a single word and will localize
the effort at the exact point where it yields a useful result: it will
then become aware of an effort which is always of the same nature and
increases at the spot assigned to it, and a feeling which, retaining
the same name, grows without changing its nature. Now, the same
illusion of consciousness is likely to be met with again in the case
of the states which are intermediate between superficial efforts and
deep-seated feelings. A large number of psychic states are accompanied,
in fact, by muscular contractions and peripheral sensations. Sometimes
these superficial elements are co-ordinated by a purely speculative
idea, sometimes by an idea of a practical order. In the first case
there is intellectual effort or attention; in the second we have
the emotions which may be called violent or acute: anger, terror,
and certain varieties of joy, sorrow, passion and desire. Let us
show briefly that the same definition of intensity applies to these
intermediate states.

[Sidenote: The intermediate states. Attention and its relation to
muscular contraction.]

Attention is not a purely physiological phenomenon, but we cannot
deny that it is accompanied by movements. These movements are neither
the cause nor the result of the phenomenon; they are part of it, they
express it in terms of space, as Ribot has so remarkably proved.[7]
Fechner had already reduced the effort of attention in a sense-organ
to the muscular feeling "produced by putting in motion, by a sort of
reflex action, the muscles which are correlated with the different
sense organs." He had noticed the very distinct sensation of tension
and contraction of the scalp, the pressure from without inwards over
the whole skull, which we experience when we make a great effort to
recall something. Ribot has studied more closely the movements which
are characteristic of voluntary attention. "Attention contracts the
frontal muscle: this muscle ... draws the eyebrow towards itself,
raises it and causes transverse wrinkles on the forehead.... In
extreme cases the mouth is opened wide. With children and with many
adults eager attention gives rise to a protrusion of the lips, a kind
of pout." Certainly, a purely psychic factor will always enter into
voluntary attention, even if it be nothing more than the exclusion by
the will of all ideas foreign to the one with which the subject wishes
to occupy himself. But, once this exclusion is made, we believe that
we are still conscious of a growing tension of soul, of an immaterial
effort which increases. Analyse this impression and you will find
nothing but the feeling of a muscular contraction which spreads over
a wider surface or changes its nature, so that the tension becomes
pressure, fatigue and pain.

[Sidenote: The intensity of violent emotions as muscular tension.]

Now, we do not see any essential difference between the effort of
attention and what may be The intensity called the effort of psychic
tension: acute desire, uncontrolled anger, passionate love, violent
hatred. Each of these states may be reduced, we believe, to a system
of muscular contractions co-ordinated by an idea; but in the case
of attention, it is the more or less reflective idea of knowing; in
the case of emotion, the unreflective idea of acting. The intensity
of these violent emotions is thus likely to be nothing but the
muscular tension which accompanies them. Darwin has given a remarkable
description of the physiological symptoms of rage. "The action of the
heart is much accelerated.... The face reddens or may turn deadly
pale. The respiration is laboured, the chest heaves, and the dilated
nostrils quiver. The whole body often trembles. The voice is affected.
The teeth are clenched or ground together and the muscular system is
commonly stimulated to violent, almost frantic action. The gestures ...
represent more or less plainly the act of striking or fighting with
an enemy."[8] We shall not go so far as to maintain, with Professor
James,[9] that the emotion of rage is reducible to the sum of these
organic sensations: there will always be an irreducible psychic element
in anger, if this be only the idea of striking or fighting, of which
Darwin speaks, and which gives a common direction to so many diverse
movements. But, though this idea determines the direction of the
emotional state and the accompanying movements, the growing intensity
of the state itself is, we believe, nothing but the deeper and deeper
disturbance of the organism, a disturbance which consciousness has no
difficulty in measuring by the number and extent of the bodily surfaces
concerned. It will be useless to assert that there is a restrained
rage which is all the more intense. The reason is that, where emotion
has free play, consciousness does not dwell on the details of the
accompanying movements, but it does dwell upon them and is concentrated
upon them when its object is to conceal them. Eliminate, in short,
all trace of organic disturbance, all tendency towards muscular
contraction, and all that will be left of anger will be the idea, or,
if you still insist on making it an emotion, you will be unable to
assign it any intensity.

[Sidenote: Intensity and reflex movements. No essential difference
between intensity of deep-seated feelings and that of violent emotions.]

"Fear, when strong," says Herbert Spencer, "expresses itself in cries,
in efforts to escape, in palpitations, in tremblings."[10] We go
further, and maintain that these movements form part of the terror
itself: by their means the terror becomes an emotion capable of passing
through different degrees of intensity. Suppress them entirely, and
the more or less intense state of terror will be succeeded by an idea
of terror, the wholly intellectual representation of a danger which it
concerns us to avoid. There are also high degrees of joy and sorrow,
of desire, aversion and even shame, the height of which will be found
to be nothing but the reflex movements begun by the organism and
perceived by consciousness. "When lovers meet," says Darwin, "we know
that their hearts beat quickly, their breathing is hurried and their
faces flushed."[11] Aversion is marked by movements of repugnance
which we repeat without noticing when we think of the object of our
dislike. We blush and involuntarily clench the fingers when we feel
shame, even if it be retrospective. The acuteness of these emotions is
estimated by the number and nature of the peripheral sensations which
accompany them. Little by little, and in proportion as the emotional
state loses its violence and gains in depth, the peripheral sensations
will give place to inner states; it will be no longer our outward
movements but our ideas, our memories, our states of consciousness of
every description, which will turn in larger or smaller numbers in a
definite direction. There is, then, no essential difference from the
point of view of intensity between the deep-seated feelings, of which
we spoke at the beginning, and the acute or violent emotions which we
have just passed in review. To say that love, hatred, desire, increase
in violence is to assert that they are projected outwards, that they
radiate to the surface, that peripheral sensations are substituted for
inner states: but superficial or deep-seated, violent or reflective,
the intensity of these feelings always consists in the multiplicity of
simple states which consciousness dimly discerns in them.

[Sidenote: Magnitude of sensations. Affective and representative
sensations.]

We have hitherto confined ourselves to feelings and efforts, complex
states the intensity of which does not absolutely depend on an external
cause. But sensations seem to us simple states: in what will their
magnitude consist? The intensity of sensations varies with the
external cause of which they are said to be the conscious equivalent:
how shall we explain the presence of quantity in an effect which is
inextensive, and in this case indivisible? To answer this question,
we must first distinguish between the so-called affective and the
representative sensations. There is no doubt that we pass gradually
from the one to the other and that some affective element enters into
the majority of our simple representations. But nothing prevents us
from isolating this element and inquiring separately, in what does the
intensity of an affective sensation, a pleasure or a pain, consist?

[Sidenote: Affective sensations and organic disturbance.]

Perhaps the difficulty of the latter problem is principally due to the
fact that we are unwilling to see in the affective state anything but
the conscious expression of an organic disturbance, the inward echo of
an outward cause. We notice that a more intense sensation generally
corresponds to a greater nervous disturbance; but inasmuch as these
disturbances are unconscious as movements, since they come before
consciousness in the guise of a sensation which has no resemblance at
all to motion, we do not see how they could transmit to the sensation
anything of their own magnitude. For there is nothing in common,
we repeat, between superposable magnitudes such as, for example,
vibration-amplitudes, and sensations which do not occupy space. If
the more intense sensation seems to us to contain the less intense,
if it assumes for us, like the physical impression itself, the form
of a magnitude, the reason probably is that it retains something of
the physical impression to which it corresponds. And it will retain
nothing of it if it is merely the conscious translation of a movement
of molecules; for, just because this movement is translated into the
sensation of pleasure or pain, it remains unconscious as molecular
movement.

[Sidenote: Pleasure and pain as signs of the future reaction rather
than psychic translations of the past stimulus.]

But it might be asked whether pleasure and pain, instead of expressing
only what has just occurred, or what is actually occurring, in the
organism, as is usually believed, could not also point out what is
going to, or what is tending to take place. It seems indeed somewhat
improbable that nature, so profoundly utilitarian, should have here
assigned to consciousness the merely scientific task of informing
us about the past or the present, which no longer depend upon us.
It must be noticed in addition that we rise by imperceptible stages
from automatic to free movements, and that the latter differ from the
former principally in introducing an affective sensation between the
external action which occasions them and the volitional reaction which
ensues. Indeed, all our actions might have been automatic, and we can
surmise that there are many organized beings in whose case an external
stimulus causes a definite reaction without calling up consciousness as
an intermediate agent. If pleasure and pain make their appearance in
certain privileged beings, it is probably to call forth a resistance to
the automatic reaction which would have taken place: either sensation
has nothing to do, or it is nascent freedom. But how would it enable us
to resist the reaction which is in preparation if it did not acquaint
us with the nature of the latter by some definite sign? And what can
this sign be except the sketching, and, as it were, the prefiguring
of the future automatic movements in the very midst of the sensation
which is being experienced? The affective state must then correspond
not merely to the physical disturbances, movements or phenomena which
have taken place, but also, and especially, to those which are in
preparation, those which are getting ready to be.

[Sidenote: Intensity of affective sensations would then be our
consciousness of the involuntary movements tending to follow the
stimulus.]

It is certainly not obvious at first sight how this hypothesis
simplifies the problem. For we are trying to find what there can be
in common, from the point of view of magnitude, between a physical
phenomenon and a state of consciousness, and we seem to have
merely turned the difficulty round by making the present state of
consciousness a sign of the future reaction, rather than a psychic
translation of the past stimulus. But the difference between the two
hypotheses is considerable. For the molecular disturbances which were
mentioned just now are necessarily unconscious, since no trace of the
movements themselves can be actually perceived in the sensation which
translates them. But the automatic movements which tend to follow
the stimulus as its natural outcome are likely to be conscious as
movements: or else the sensation itself, whose function is to invite us
to choose between this automatic reaction and other possible movements,
would be of no avail. The intensity of affective sensations might thus
be nothing more than our consciousness of the involuntary movements
which are being begun and outlined, so to speak, within these states,
and which would have gone on in their own way if nature had made us
automata instead of conscious beings.

[Sidenote: Intensity of a pain estimated by extent of organism
affected.]

If such be the case, we shall not compare a pain of increasing
intensity to a note which grows louder and louder, but rather to a
symphony, in which an increasing number of instruments make themselves
heard. Within the characteristic sensation, which gives the tone
to all the others, consciousness distinguishes a larger or smaller
number of sensations arising at different points of the periphery,
muscular contractions, organic movements of every kind: the choir
of these elementary psychic states voices the new demands of the
organism, when confronted by a new situation. In other words, we
estimate the intensity of a pain by the larger or smaller part of the
organism which takes interest in it. Richet[12] has observed that the
slighter the pain, the more precisely is it referred to a particular
spot; if it becomes more intense, it is referred to the whole of the
member affected. And he concludes by saying that "the pain spreads in
proportion as it is more intense."[13] We should rather reverse the
sentence, and define the intensity of the pain by the very number and
extent of the parts of the body which sympathize with it and react, and
whose reactions are perceived by consciousness. To convince ourselves
of this, it will be enough to read the remarkable description of
disgust given by the same author: "If the stimulus is slight there
may be neither nausea nor vomiting.... If the stimulus is stronger,
instead of being confined to the pneumo-gastric nerve, it spreads and
affects almost the whole organic system. The face turns pale, the
smooth muscles of the skin contract, the skin is covered with a cold
perspiration, the heart stops beating: in a word there is a general
organic disturbance following the stimulation of the medulla oblongata,
and this disturbance is the supreme expression of disgust."[14] But is
it nothing more than its expression? In what will the general sensation
of disgust consist, if not in the sum of these elementary sensations?
And what can we understand here by increasing intensity, if it is
not the constantly increasing number of sensations which join in
with the sensations already experienced? Darwin has drawn a striking
picture of the reactions following a pain which becomes more and more
acute. "Great pain urges all animals ... to make the most violent and
diversified efforts to escape from the cause of suffering.... With men
the mouth may be closely compressed, or more commonly the lips are
retracted with the teeth clenched or ground together.... The eyes stare
wildly ... or the brows are heavily contracted. Perspiration bathes
the body.... The circulation and respiration are much affected."[15]
Now, is it not by this very contraction of the muscles affected that
we measure the intensity of a pain? Analyse your idea of any suffering
which you call extreme: do you not mean that it is unbearable, that is
to say, that it urges the organism to a thousand different actions in
order to escape from it? I can picture to myself a nerve transmitting a
pain which is independent of all automatic reaction; and I can equally
understand that stronger or weaker stimulations influence this nerve
differently. But I do not see how these differences of sensation would
be interpreted by our consciousness as differences of quantity unless
we connected them with the reactions which usually accompany them, and
which are more or less extended and more or less important. Without
these subsequent reactions, the intensity of the pain would be a
quality, and not a magnitude.

[Sidenote: Pleasures compared by bodily inclination.]

We have hardly any other means of comparing several pleasures with
one another. What do we mean by a greater pleasure except a pleasure
that is preferred? And what can our preference be, except a certain
disposition of our organs, the effect of which is that, when two
pleasures are offered simultaneously to our mind, our body inclines
towards one of them? Analyse this inclination itself and you will find
a great many little movements which begin and become perceptible in the
organs concerned, and even in the rest of the body, as if the organism
were coming forth to meet the pleasure as soon as it is pictured. When
we define inclination as a movement, we are not using a metaphor.
When confronted by several pleasures pictured by our mind, our body
turns towards one of them spontaneously, as though by a reflex action.
It rests with us to check it, but the attraction of the pleasure is
nothing but this movement that is begun, and the very keenness of the
pleasure, while we enjoy it, is merely the inertia of the organism,
which is immersed in it and rejects every other sensation. Without this
_vis inertiae_ of which we become conscious by the very resistance
which we offer to anything that might distract us, pleasure would be
a state, but no longer a magnitude. In the moral as in the physical
world, attraction serves to define movement rather than to produce it.

[Sidenote: The intensity of representative sensations. Many also
affective and intensity is measured by reaction called forth. In others
a new element enters.]

We have studied the affective sensations separately, but we must
now notice that many representative sensations possess an affective
character, and thus call forth a reaction on our part which we take
into account in estimating their intensity. A considerable increase
of light is represented for us by a characteristic sensation which
is not yet pain, but which is analogous to dazzling. In proportion
as the amplitude of sound-vibrations increases, our head and then
our body seem to us to vibrate or to receive a shock. Certain
representative sensations, those of taste, smell and temperature, have
a fixed character of pleasantness or unpleasantness. Between flavours
which are more or less bitter you will hardly distinguish anything
but differences of quality; they are like different shades of one
and the same colour. But these differences of quality are at once
interpreted as differences of quantity, because of their affective
character and the more or less pronounced movements of reaction,
pleasure or repugnance, which they suggest to us. Besides, even when
the sensation remains purely representative, its external cause cannot
exceed a certain degree of strength or weakness without inciting us
to movements which enable us to measure it. Sometimes indeed we have
to make an effort to perceive this sensation, as if it were trying
to escape notice; sometimes on the other hand it obsesses us, forces
itself upon us and engrosses us to such an extent that we make every
effort to escape from it and to remain ourselves. In the former case
the sensation is said to be of slight intensity, and in the latter
case very intense. Thus, in order to perceive a distant sound, to
distinguish what we call a faint smell or a dim light, we strain all
our faculties, we "pay attention." And it is just because the smell
and the light thus require to be reinforced by our efforts that they
seem to us feeble. And, inversely, we recognize a sensation of extreme
intensity by the irresistible reflex movements to which it incites
us, or by the powerlessness with which it affects us. When a cannon
is fired off close to our ears or a dazzling light suddenly flares
up, we lose for an instant the consciousness of our personality; this
state may even last some time in the case of a very nervous subject.
It must be added that, even within the range of the so-called medium
intensities, when we are dealing on even terms with a representative
sensation, we often estimate its importance by comparing it with
another which it drives away, or by taking account of the persistence
with which it returns. Thus the ticking of a watch seems louder at
night because it easily monopolizes a consciousness almost empty of
sensations and ideas. Foreigners talking to one another in a language
which we do not understand seem to us to speak very loudly, because
their words no longer call up any ideas in our mind, and thus break
in upon a kind of intellectual silence and monopolize our attention
like the ticking of a watch at night. With these so-called medium
sensations, however, we approach a series of psychic states, the
intensity of which is likely to possess a new meaning. For, in most
cases, the organism hardly reacts at all, at least in a way that can
be perceived; and yet we still make a magnitude out of the pitch of a
sound, the intensity of a light, the saturation of a colour. Doubtless,
a closer observation of what takes place in the whole of the organism
when we hear such and such a note or perceive such and such a colour
has more than one surprise in store for us. Has not C. Féré shown that
every sensation is accompanied by an increase in muscular force which
can be measured by the dynamometer?[16] But of an increase of this
kind there is hardly any consciousness at all, and if we reflect on
the precision with which we distinguish sounds and colours, nay, even
weights and temperatures, we shall easily guess that some new element
must come into play in our estimate of them.

[Sidenote: The purely representative sensations are measured by
external causes.]

Now, the nature of this element is easy to determine. For, in
proportion as a sensation loses its affective character and becomes
representative, the reactions which it called forth on our part
tend to disappear, but at the same time we perceive the external
object which is its cause, or if we do not now perceive it, we have
perceived it, and we think of it. Now, this cause is extensive and
therefore measurable: a constant experience, which began with the first
glimmerings of consciousness and which continues throughout the whole
of our life, shows us a definite shade of sensation corresponding to a
definite amount of stimulation. We thus associate the idea of a certain
quantity of cause with a certain quality of effect; and finally, as
happens in the case of every acquired perception, we transfer the idea
into the sensation, the quantity of the cause into the quality of the
effect. At this very moment the intensity, which was nothing but a
certain shade or quality of the sensation, becomes a magnitude. We
shall easily understand this process if, for example, we hold a pin in
our right hand and prick our left hand more and more deeply. At first
we shall feel as it were a tickling, then a touch which is succeeded by
a prick, then a pain localized at a point, and finally the spreading
of this pain over the surrounding zone. And the more we reflect on
it, the more clearly shall we see that we are here dealing with so
many qualitatively distinct sensations, so many varieties of a single
species. But yet we spoke at first of one and the same sensation which
spread further and further, of one prick which increased in intensity.
The reason is that, without noticing it, we localized in the sensation
of the left hand, which is pricked, the progressive effort of the right
hand, which pricks. We thus introduced the cause into the effect, and
unconsciously interpreted quality as quantity, intensity as magnitude.
Now, it is easy to see that the intensity of every representative
sensation ought to be understood in the same way.

[Sidenote: The sensations of sound. Intensity measured by effort
necessary to produce a similar sound.]

The sensations of sound display well marked degrees of intensity.
We have already spoken of the necessity of taking into account the
affective character of these sensations, the shock received by the
whole of the organism. We have shown that a very intense sound is one
which engrosses our attention, which supplants all the others. But
take away the shock, the well-marked vibration, which you sometimes
feel in your head or even throughout your body: take away the clash
which takes place between sounds heard simultaneously: what will be
left except an indefinable quality of the sound which is heard? But
this quality is immediately interpreted as quantity because you have
obtained it yourself a thousand times, e.g. by striking some object
and thus expending a definite quantity of effort. You know, too, how
far you would have to raise your voice to produce a similar sound,
and the idea of this effort immediately comes into your mind when you
transform the intensity of the sound into a magnitude. Wundt[17] has
drawn attention to the quite special connexions of vocal and auditory
nervous filaments which are met with in the human brain. And has it not
been said that to hear is to speak to oneself? Some neuropaths cannot
be present at a conversation without moving their lips; this is only an
exaggeration of what takes place in the case of every one of us. How
will the expressive or rather suggestive power of music be explained,
if not by admitting that we repeat to ourselves the sounds heard, so
as to carry ourselves back into the psychic state out of which they
emerged, an original state, which nothing will express, but which
something may suggest, viz., the very motion and attitude which the
sound imparts to our body?

[Sidenote: Intensity and pitch. The part played by muscular effort.]

Thus, when we speak of the intensity of a sound of medium force as a
magnitude, we allude principally to the greater or less effort which we
should have ourselves to expend in order to summon, by our own effort,
the same auditory sensation.

Now, besides the intensity, we distinguish another characteristic
property of the sound, its pitch. Are the differences in pitch, such
as our ear perceives, quantitative differences? I grant that a sharper
sound calls up the picture of a higher position in space. But does it
follow from this that the notes of the scale, as auditory sensations,
differ otherwise than in quality? Forget what you have learnt from
physics, examine carefully your idea of a higher or lower note, and see
whether you do not think simply of the greater or less effort which
the tensor muscle of your vocal chords has to make in order to produce
the note? As the effort by which your voice passes from one note to
another is discontinuous, you picture to yourself these successive
notes as points in space, to be reached by a series of sudden jumps,
in each of which you cross an empty separating interval: this is why
you establish intervals between the notes of the scale. Now, why is
the line along which we dispose them vertical rather than horizontal,
and why do we say that the sound ascends in some cases and descends in
others? It must be remembered that the high notes seem to us to produce
some sort of resonance in the head and the deep notes in the thorax:
this perception, whether real or illusory, has undoubtedly had some
effect in making us reckon the intervals vertically. But we must also
notice that the greater the tension of the vocal chords in the chest
voice, the greater is the surface of the body affected, if the singer
is inexperienced; this is just the reason why the effort is felt by
him as more intense. And as he breathes out the air upwards, he will
attribute the same direction to the sound produced by the current of
air; hence the sympathy of a larger part of the body with the vocal
muscles will be represented by a movement upwards. We shall thus say
that the note is higher because the body makes an effort as though to
reach an object which is more elevated in space. In this way it became
customary to assign a certain height to each note of the scale, and as
soon as the physicist was able to define it by the number of vibrations
in a given time to which it corresponds, we no longer hesitated to
declare that our ear perceived differences of quantity directly. But
the sound would remain a pure quality if we did not bring in the
muscular effort which produces it or the vibrations which explain it.

[Sidenote: The sensations of heat and cold. These soon become affective
and are measured by reactions called forth.]

The experiments of Blix, Goldscheider and Donaldson[18] have shown
that the points on the surface of the body which feel cold are not the
same as those which feel heat. Physiology is thus disposed to set up a
distinction of nature, and not merely of degree, between the sensations
of heat and cold. But psychological observation goes further, for
close attention can easily discover specific differences between the
different sensations of heat, as also between the sensations of
cold. A more intense heat is really another kind of heat. We call it
more intense because we have experienced this same change a thousand
times when we approached nearer and nearer a source of heat, or when a
growing surface of our body was affected by it. Besides, the sensations
of heat and cold very quickly become affective and incite us to more or
less marked reactions by which we measure their external cause: hence,
we are inclined to set up similar quantitative differences among the
sensations which correspond to lower intensities of the cause. But I
shall not insist any further; every one must question himself carefully
on this point, after making a clean sweep of everything which his
past experience has taught him about the cause of his sensations and
coming face to face with the sensations themselves. The result of this
examination is likely to be as follows: it will be perceived that the
magnitude of a representative sensation depends on the cause having
been put into the effect, while the intensity of the affective element
depends on the more or less important reactions which prolong the
external stimulations and find their way into the sensation itself.

[Sidenote: The sensation of pressure and weight measured by extent of
organism affected.]

The same thing will be experienced in the case of pressure and even
weight. When you say that a pressure on your hand becomes stronger,
see whether you do not mean that there first was a contact, then a
pressure, afterwards a pain, and that this pain itself, after having
gone through a series of qualitative changes, has spread further and
further over the surrounding region. Look again and see whether you do
not bring in the more and more intense, i.e. more and more extended,
effort of resistance which you oppose to the external pressure. When
the psychophysicist lifts a heavier weight, he experiences, he says,
an increase of sensation. Examine whether this increase of sensation
ought not rather to be called a sensation of increase. The whole
question is centred in this, for in the first case the sensation would
be a quantity like its external cause, whilst in the second it would
be a quality which had become representative of the magnitude of
its cause. The distinction between the heavy and the light may seem
to be as old-fashioned and as childish as that between the hot and
the cold. But the very childishness of this distinction makes it a
psychological reality. And not only do the heavy and the light impress
our consciousness as generically different, but the various degrees
of lightness and heaviness are so many species of these two genera.
It must be added that the difference of quality is here translated
spontaneously into a difference of quantity, because of the more or
less extended effort which our body makes in order to lift a given
weight. Of this you will soon become aware if you are asked to lift a
basket which, you are told, is full of scrap-iron, whilst in fact there
is nothing in it. You will think you are losing your balance when you
catch hold of it, as though distant muscles had interested themselves
beforehand in the operation and experienced a sudden disappointment.
It is chiefly by the number and nature of these sympathetic efforts,
which take place at different points of the organism, that you measure
the sensation of weight at a given point; and this sensation would
be nothing more than a quality if you did not thus introduce into
it the idea of a magnitude. What strengthens the illusion on this
point is that we have become accustomed to believe in the immediate
perception of a homogeneous movement in a homogeneous space. When I
lift a light weight with my arm, all the rest of my body remaining
motionless, I experience a series of muscular sensations each of which
has its "local sign," its peculiar shade: it is this series which
my consciousness interprets as a continuous movement in space. If I
afterwards lift a heavier weight to the same height with the same
speed, I pass through a new series of muscular sensations, each of
which differs from the corresponding term of the preceding series. Of
this I could easily convince myself by examining them closely. But
as I interpret this new series also as a continuous movement, and as
this movement has the same direction, the same duration and the same
velocity as the preceding, my consciousness feels itself bound to
localize the difference between the second series of sensations and
the first elsewhere than in the movement itself. It thus materializes
this difference at the extremity of the arm which moves; it persuades
itself that the sensation of movement has been identical in both cases,
while the sensation of weight differed in magnitude. But movement and
weight are but distinctions of the reflective consciousness: what is
present to consciousness immediately is the sensation of, so to speak,
a heavy movement, and this sensation itself can be resolved by analysis
into a series of muscular sensations, each of which represents by its
shade its place of origin and by its colour the magnitude of the weight
lifted.

[Sidenote: The sensation of light. Qualitative changes of colour
interpreted as quantitative changes in intensity of luminous source.]

Shall we call the intensity of light a quantity, or shall we treat
it as a quality? It has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed what a
large number of different factors co-operate in daily life in giving
us information about the nature of the luminous source. We know from
long experience that, when we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
outlines and details of objects, the light is at a distance or on
the point of going out. Experience has taught us that the affective
sensation or nascent dazzling that we experience in certain cases must
be attributed to a higher intensity of the cause. Any increase or
diminution in the number of luminous sources alters the way in which
the sharp lines of bodies stand out and also the shadows which they
project. Still more important are the changes of hue which coloured
surfaces, and even the pure colours of the spectrum, undergo under
the influence of a brighter or dimmer light. As the luminous source
is brought nearer, violet takes a bluish tinge, green tends to become
a whitish yellow, and red a brilliant yellow. Inversely, when the
light is moved away, ultramarine passes into violet and yellow into
green; finally, red, green and violet tend to become a whitish yellow.
Physicists have remarked these changes of hue for some time;[19] but
what is still more remarkable is that the majority of men do not
perceive them, unless they pay attention to them or are warned of
them. Having made up our mind, once for all, to interpret changes
of quality as changes of quantity, we begin by asserting that every
object has its own peculiar colour, definite and invariable. And when
the hue of objects tends to become yellow or blue, instead of saying
that we see their colour change under the influence of an increase or
diminution of light, we assert that the colour remains the same but
that our sensation of luminous intensity increases or diminishes. We
thus substitute once more, for the qualitative impression received
by our consciousness, the quantitative interpretation given by our
understanding. Helmholtz has described a case of interpretation of
the same kind, but still more complicated: "If we form white with
two colours of the spectrum, and if we increase or diminish the
intensities of the two coloured lights in the same ratio, so that the
proportions of the combination remain the same, the resultant colour
remains the same although the relative intensity of the sensations
undergoes a marked change.... This depends on the fact that the light
of the sun, which we consider as the normal white light during the
day, itself undergoes similar modifications of shade when the luminous
intensity varies."[20]

[Sidenote: Does experiment prove that we can measure directly our
sensations of light?]

But yet, if we often judge of variations in the luminous source by
the relative changes of hue of the objects which surround us, this is
no longer the case in simple instances where a single object, e.g.
a white surface, passes successively through different degrees of
luminosity. We are bound to insist particularly on this last point.
For the physicist speaks of degrees of luminous intensity as of real
quantities: and, in fact, he measures them by the photometer. The
psychophysicist goes still further: he maintains that our eye itself
estimates the intensities of light. Experiments have been attempted,
at first by Delbœuf,[21] and afterwards by Lehmann and Neiglick,[22]
with the view of constructing a psychophysical formula from the direct
measurement of our luminous sensations. Of these experiments we shall
not dispute the result, nor shall we deny the value of photometric
processes; but we must see how we have to interpret them.

[Sidenote: Photometric experiments. We perceive different shades and
afterwards interpret them as decreasing intensities of white light.]

Look closely at a sheet of paper lighted e.g. by four candles, and put
out in succession one, two, Photometric three of them. You say that
the surface remains white and that its brightness diminishes. But you
are aware that one candle has just been put out; or, if you do not
know it, you have often observed a similar change in the appearance of
a white surface when the illumination was diminished. Put aside what
you remember of your past experiences and what you are accustomed to
say of the present ones; you will find that what you really perceive
is not a diminished illumination of the white surface, it is a _layer
of shadow_ passing over this surface at the moment the candle is
extinguished. This shadow is a reality to your consciousness, like
the light itself. If you call the first surface in all its brilliancy
white, you will have to give another name to what you now see, for it
is a different thing: it is, if we may say so, a new shade of white.
We have grown accustomed, through the combined influence of our past
experience and of physical theories, to regard black as the absence,
or at least as the minimum, of luminous sensation, and the successive
shades of grey as decreasing intensities of white light. But, in
point of fact, black has just as much reality for our consciousness
as white, and the decreasing intensities of white light illuminating
a given surface would appear to an unprejudiced consciousness as so
many different shades, not unlike the various colours of the spectrum.
This is the reason why the change in the sensation is not continuous,
as it is in the external cause, and why the light can increase or
decrease for a certain period without producing any apparent change
in the illumination of our white surface: the illumination will not
appear to change until the increase or decrease of the external light
is sufficient to produce a new quality. The variations in brightness
of a given colour--the affective sensations of which we have spoken
above being left aside--would thus be nothing but qualitative changes,
were it not our custom to transfer the cause to the effect and to
replace our immediate impressions by what we learn from experience
and science. The same thing might be said of degrees of saturation.
Indeed, if the different intensities of a colour correspond to so many
different shades existing between this colour and black, the degrees
of saturation are like shades intermediate between this same colour
and pure white. Every colour, we might say, can be regarded under two
aspects, from the point of view of black and from the point of view of
white. And black is then to intensity what white is to saturation.

[Sidenote: In photometric experiments the physicist compares, not
sensations, but physical effects.]

The meaning of the photometric experiments will now be understood. A
candle placed at a certain distance from a sheet of paper illuminates
it in a certain way: you double the distance and find that four candles
are required to produce the same effects, sensation. From this you
conclude that if you had doubled the distance without increasing the
intensity of the luminous source, the resultant illumination would
have been only one-fourth as bright. But it is quite obvious that you
are here dealing with the physical and not the psychological effect.
For it cannot be said that you have compared two sensations with one
another: you have made use of a single sensation in order to compare
two different luminous sources with each other, the second four
times as strong as the first but twice as far off. In a word, the
physicist never brings in sensations which are twice or three times
as great as others, but only identical sensations, destined to serve
as intermediaries between two physical quantities which can then be
equated with one another. The sensation of light here plays the part
of the auxiliary unknown quantity which the mathematician introduces
into his calculations, and which is not intended to appear in the final
result.

[Sidenote: The psychophysicist claims to compare and measure
sensations. Delbœuf's experiments.]

But the object of the psychophysicist is entirely different: it is the
sensation of light itself which he studies, and claims to measure.
Sometimes he will proceed to integrate infinitely small differences,
after the method of Fechner; sometimes he will compare one sensation
directly with another. The latter method, due to Plateau and Delbœuf,
differs far less than has hitherto been believed from Fechner's: but,
as it bears more especially on the luminous sensations, we shall deal
with it first. Delbœuf places an observer in front of three concentric
rings which vary in brightness. By an ingenious arrangement he can
cause each of these rings to pass through all the shades intermediate
between white and black. Let us suppose that two hues of grey are
simultaneously produced on two of the rings and kept unchanged; let
us call them A and B. Delbœuf alters the brightness, C, of the third
ring, and asks the observer to tell him whether, at a certain moment,
the grey, B, appears to him equally distant from the other two. A
moment comes, in fact, when the observer states that the contrast A B
is equal to the contrast B C, so that, according to Delbœuf, a scale of
luminous intensities could be constructed on which we might pass from
each sensation to the following one by equal sensible contrasts: our
sensations would thus be measured by one another. I shall not follow
Delbœuf into the conclusions which he has drawn from these remarkable
experiments: the essential question, the only question, as it seems
to me, is whether a contrast A B, formed of the elements A and B, is
really equal to a contrast B C, which is differently composed. As
soon as it is proved that two sensations can be equal without being
identical, psychophysics will be established. But it is this equality
which seems to me open to question: it is easy to explain, in fact,
how a sensation of luminous intensity can be said to be at an equal
distance from two others.

[Sidenote: In what cases differences of colour might be interpreted as
differences of magnitude.]

Let us assume for a moment that from our birth onwards the growing
intensity of a luminous source had always called up in our
consciousness, one after the other, the different colours of the
spectrum. There is no doubt that these colours would then appear to us
as so many notes of a gamut, as higher or lower degrees in a scale,
in a word, as magnitudes. Moreover it would be easy for us to assign
each of them its place in the series. For although the extensive
cause varies continuously, the changes in the sensation of colour
are discontinuous, passing from one shade to another shade. However
numerous, then, may be the shades intermediate between the two colours,
A and B, it will always be possible to count them in thought, at least
roughly, and ascertain whether this number is almost equal to that
of the shades which separate B from another colour C. In the latter
case it will be said that B is equally distant from A and C, that the
contrast is the same on one side as on the other. But this will always
be merely a convenient interpretation: for although the number of
intermediate shades may be equal on both sides, although we may pass
from one to the other by sudden leaps, we do not know whether these
leaps are magnitudes, still less whether they are _equal_ magnitudes:
above all it would be necessary to show that the intermediaries which
have helped us throughout our measurement could be found again inside
the object which we have measured. If not, it is only by a metaphor
that a sensation can be said to be an equal distance from two others.

[Sidenote: This is just the case with differences of intensity in
sensations of light. Delbœuf's underlying postulate.]

Now, if the views which we have before enumerated with regard to
luminous intensities are accepted, it will be recognized that the
different hues of grey which Delbœuf displays to us are strictly
analogous, for our consciousness, to colours, and that if we declare
that a grey tint is equidistant from two other grey tints, it is in
the same sense in which it might be said that orange, for example, is
at an equal distance from green and red. But there is this difference,
that in all our past experience the succession of grey tints has
been produced in connexion with a progressive increase or decrease
in illumination. Hence we do for the differences of brightness what
we do not think of doing for the differences of colour: we promote
the changes of quality into variations of magnitude. Indeed, there
is no difficulty here about the measuring, because the successive
shades of grey produced by a continuous decrease of illumination
are discontinuous, as being qualities, and because we can count
approximately the principal intermediate shades which separate any
two kinds of grey. The contrast A B will thus be declared equal to
the contrast B C when our imagination, aided by our memory, inserts
between A and B the same number of intermediate shades as between B
and C. It is needless to say that this will necessarily be a very
rough estimate. We may anticipate that it will vary considerably with
different persons. Above all it is to be expected that the person
will show more hesitation and that the estimates of different persons
will differ more widely in proportion as the difference in brightness
between the rings A and B is increased, for a more and more laborious
effort will be required to estimate the number of intermediate hues.
This is exactly what happens, as we shall easily perceive by glancing
at the two tables drawn up by Delbœuf.[23] In proportion as he
increases the difference in brightness between the exterior ring and
the middle ring, the difference between the numbers on which one and
the same observer or different observers successively fix increases
almost continuously from 3 degrees to 94, from 5 to 73, from 10 to 25,
from 7 to 40. But let us leave these divergences on one side: let us
assume that the observers are always consistent and always agree with
one another; will it then be established that the contrasts A B and B
C are equal? It would first be necessary to prove that two successive
elementary contrasts are equal quantities, whilst, in fact, we only
know that they are successive. It would then be necessary to prove that
inside a given tint of grey we perceive the less intense shades which
our imagination has run through in order to estimate the objective
intensity of the source of light. In a word, Delbœuf's psychophysics
assumes a theoretical postulate of the greatest importance, which
is disguised under the cloak of an experimental result, and which
we should formulate as follows: "When the objective quantity of
light is continuously increased, the differences between the hues of
grey successively obtained, each of which represents the smallest
perceptible increase of physical stimulation, are quantities equal to
one another. And besides, any one of the sensations obtained can be
equated with the sum of the differences which separate from one another
all previous sensations, going from zero upwards." Now, this is just
the postulate of Fechner's psychophysics, which we are going to examine.


[Sidenote: Fechner's psychophysics. Weber's Law.]

Fechner took as his starting-point a law discovered by Weber, according
to which, given a certain stimulus which calls forth a certain
sensation, the amount by which the stimulus must be increased for
consciousness to become aware of any change bears a fixed relation
to the original stimulus. Thus, if we denote by Ε the stimulus which
corresponds to the sensation S, and by ΔΕ the amount by which the
original stimulus must be increased in order that a sensation of
difference may be produced, we shall have ΔΕ/E = const. This formula
has been much modified by the disciples of Fechner, and we prefer to
take no part in the discussion; it is for experiment to decide between
the relation established by Weber and its substitutes. Nor shall we
raise any difficulty about granting the probable existence of a law of
this nature. It is here really a question not of measuring a sensation
but only of determining the exact moment at which an increase of
stimulus produces a change in it. Now, if a definite amount of stimulus
produces a definite shade of sensation, it is obvious that the minimum
amount of stimulus required to produce a change in this shade is also
definite; and since it is not constant, it must be a function of the
original stimulus. But how are we to pass from a relation between the
stimulus and its minimum increase to an equation which connects the
**"amount of sensation" with the corresponding stimulus? The whole of
psychophysics is involved in this transition, which is therefore worthy
of our closest consideration.

[Sidenote: The underlying assumptions and the process by which
Fechner's Law is reached.]

We shall distinguish several different artifices in the process of
transition from Weber's experiments, or from any other series of
similar observations, to a psychophysical law like Fechner's. It is
first of all agreed to consider our consciousness of an increase of
stimulus as an increase of the sensation S: this is therefore called
S. It is then asserted that all the sensations ΔS, which correspond
to the smallest perceptible increase of stimulus, are equal to one
another. They are therefore treated as quantities, and while, on the
one hand, these quantities are supposed to be always equal, and, on
the other, experiment has given a certain relation ΔΕ = ∫(E) between
the stimulus Ε and its minimum increase, the constancy of ΔS is
expressed by writing ΔS = C ΔE/∫(E), C being a constant quantity.
Finally it is agreed to replace the very small differences ΔS and ΔΕ
by the infinitely small differences _d_S and _d_E, whence an equation
which is, this time, a differential one: _d_S = C _d_E/∫(E). We shall
now simply have to integrate on both sides to obtain the desired
relation[24]: S=C ∬_d_E/∫(E). And the transition will thus be made from
a proved law, which only concerned the _occurrence_ of a sensation, to
an unprovable law which gives its _measure._

Without entering upon any thorough discussion of this ingenious
operation, let us show in a few words how Fechner has grasped the real
difficulty of the problem, how he has tried to overcome it, and where,
as it seems to us, the flaw in his reasoning lies.

[Sidenote: Can two sensations be equal without being identical?]

Fechner realized that measurement could not be introduced into
psychology without first defining what is meant by the equality and
addition of two simple states, e.g. two sensations. But, unless they
are identical, we do not at first see how two sensations can be equal.
Undoubtedly in the physical world equality is not synonymous with
identity. But the reason is that every phenomenon, every object, is
there presented under two aspects, the one qualitative and the other
extensive: nothing prevents us from putting the first one aside,
and then there remains nothing but terms which can be directly or
indirectly superposed on one another and consequently seen to be
identical. Now, this qualitative element, which we begin by eliminating
from external objects in order to measure them, is the very thing which
psychophysics retains and claims to measure. And it is no use trying to
measure this quality Q by some physical quantity Q' which lies beneath
it: for it would be necessary to have previously shown that Q is a
function of Q', and this would not be possible unless the quality Q had
first been measured with some fraction of itself. Thus nothing prevents
us from measuring the sensation of heat by the degree of temperature;
but this is only a convention, and the whole point of psychophysics
lies in rejecting this convention and seeking how the sensation of
heat varies when you change the temperature. In a word, it seems,
on the one hand, that two different sensations cannot be said to be
equal unless some identical residuum remains after the elimination of
their qualitative difference; but, on the other hand, this qualitative
difference being all that we perceive, it does not appear what could
remain once it was eliminated.

[Sidenote: Fechner's method of _minimum_ differences.]

The novel feature in Fechner's treatment is that he did not consider
this difficulty insurmountable. Taking advantage of the fact that
sensation varies by sudden jumps while the stimulus increases
continuously, he did not hesitate to call these differences of
sensation by the same name: they are all, he says, _minimum_
differences, since each corresponds to the smallest perceptible
increase in the external stimulus. Therefore you can set aside the
specific shade or quality of these successive differences; a common
residuum will remain in virtue of which they will be seen to be in a
manner identical: they all have the common character of being _minima._
Such will be the definition of equality which we were seeking. Now,
the definition of addition will follow naturally. For if we treat
as a quantity the difference perceived by consciousness between two
sensations which succeed one another in the course of a continuous
increase of stimulus, if we call the first sensation S, and the
second S + ΔS, we shall have to consider every sensation S as a sum,
obtained by the addition of the minimum differences through which
we pass before reaching it. The only remaining step will then be to
utilize this twofold definition in order to establish, first of all,
a relation between the differences ΔS and ΔΕ, and then, through the
substitution of the differentials, between the two variables. True, the
mathematicians may here lodge a protest against the substitution of
differential for difference; the psychologists may ask, too, whether
the quantity ΔS, instead of being constant, does not vary as the
sensation S itself;[25] finally, taking the psychophysical law for
granted, we may all debate about its real meaning. But, by the mere
fact that ΔS is regarded as a quantity and S as a sum, the fundamental
postulate of the whole process is accepted.

[Sidenote: Break-down of the assumption that the sensation is a sum,
and the minimum differences quantities.]

Now it is just this postulate which seems to us open to question, even
if it can be understood. Assume that I experience a sensation S, and
that, increasing the stimulus continuously, I perceive this increase
after a certain time. I am now notified of the increase of the cause:
but why should I call this notification an arithmetical difference? No
doubt the notification consists in the fact that the original state S
has changed: it has become S'; but the transition from S to S' could
only be called an arithmetical difference if I were conscious, so to
speak, of an interval between S and S', and if my sensation were felt
to rise from S to S' by the addition of something. By giving this
transition a name, by calling it ΔS,** you make it first a reality and
then a quantity. Now, not only are you unable to explain in what sense
this transition is a quantity, but reflection will show you that it is
not even a reality; the only realities are the states S and S' through
which I pass. No doubt, if S and S' were numbers, I could assert the
reality of the difference S'--S even though S and S' alone were given;
the reason is that the number S'--S, which is a certain sum of units,
will then represent just the successive moments of the addition by
which we pass from S to S'. But if S and S' are simple states, in what
will the _interval_ which separates them consist? And what, then, can
the transition from the first state to the second be, if not a mere act
of your thought, which, arbitrarily and for the sake of the argument,
assimilates a succession of two states to a differentiation of two
magnitudes?

[Sidenote: We can speak of "arithmetical difference" only in a
conventional sense.]

Either you keep to what consciousness presents to you or you have
recourse to a conventional mode of representation. In the first case
you will find a difference between S and S' like that between the
shades sense. Of rainbow, and not at all an interval of magnitude.
In the second case you may introduce the symbol ΔS if you like,
but it is only in a conventional sense that you will speak here of
an arithmetical difference, and in a conventional sense, also, that
you will assimilate a sensation to a sum. The most acute of Fechner's
critics, Jules Tannery, has made the latter point perfectly clear. "It
will be said, for example, that a sensation of 50 degrees is expressed
by the number of differential sensations which would succeed one
another from the point where sensation is absent up to the sensation
of 50 degrees.... I do not see that this is anything but a definition,
which is as legitimate as it is arbitrary."[26]

[Sidenote: Delbœuf's results seem more plausible but, in the end, all
psychophysics revolves in a vicious circle.]

We do not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that the method
of mean gradations has set psychophysics on a new path. The novel
feature in Delbœuf's investigation was that he chose a particular case,
in which consciousness seemed to decide in Fechner's favour, and in
which common sense itself played the part of the psychophysicist. He
inquired whether certain sensations did not appear to us immediately as
equal although different, and whether it would not be possible to draw
up, by their help, a table of sensations which were double, triple or
quadruple those which preceded them. The mistake which Fechner made,
as we have just seen, was that he believed in an interval between two
successive sensations S and S', when there is simply a _passing_ from
one to the other and not a _difference_ in the arithmetical sense of
the word. But if the two terms between which the passing takes place
could be given simultaneously, there would then be a contrast besides
the transition; and although the contrast is not yet an arithmetical
difference, it resembles it in a certain respect; for the two terms
which are compared stand here side by side as in a case of subtraction
of two numbers. Suppose now that these sensations belong to the same
_genus_ and that in our past experience we have constantly been present
at their march past, so to speak, while the physical stimulus increased
continuously: it is extremely probable that we shall thrust the cause
into the effect, and that the idea of contrast will thus melt into that
of arithmetical difference. As we shall have noticed, moreover, that
the sensation changed abruptly while the stimulus rose continuously,
we shall no doubt estimate the distance between two given sensations
by a rough guess at the number of these sudden jumps, or at least of
the intermediate sensations which usually serve us as landmarks. To
sum up, the contrast will appear to us as a difference, the stimulus
as a quantity, the sudden jump as an element of equality: combining
these three factors, we shall reach the idea of equal quantitative
differences. Now, these conditions are nowhere so well realized as
when surfaces of the same colour, more or less illuminated, are
simultaneously presented to us. Not only is there here a contrast
between similar sensations, but these sensations correspond to a cause
whose influence has always been felt by us to be closely connected with
its distance; and, as this distance can vary continuously, we cannot
have escaped noticing in our past experience a vast number of shades
of sensation which succeeded one another along with the continuous
increase in the cause. We are therefore able to say that the contrast
between one shade of grey and another, for example, seems to us almost
equal to the contrast between the latter and a third one; and if we
define two equal sensations by saying that they are sensations which
a more or less confused process of reasoning interprets as such, we
shall in fact reach a law like that proposed by Delbœuf. But it must
not be forgotten that consciousness has here passed through the same
intermediate steps as the psychophysicist, and that its judgment
is worth here just what psychophysics is worth; it is a symbolical
interpretation of quality as quantity, a more or less rough estimate
of the number of sensations which can come in between two given
sensations. The difference is thus not as great as is believed between
the method of least noticeable differences and that of mean gradations,
between the psychophysics of Fechner and that of Delbœuf. The first
led to a conventional measurement of sensation; the second appeals
to common sense in the particular cases where common sense adopts a
similar convention. In a word, all psychophysics is condemned by its
origin to revolve in a vicious circle, for the theoretical postulate on
which it rests condemns it to experimental verification, and it cannot
be experimentally verified unless its postulate is first granted. The
fact is that there is no point of contact between the unextended and
the extended, between quality and quantity. We can interpret the one by
the other, set up the one as the equivalent of the other; but sooner or
later, at the beginning or at the end, we shall have to recognize the
conventional character of this assimilation.

[Sidenote: Psychophysics merely pushes to its extreme consequences the
fundamental but natural mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes.]

In truth, psychophysics merely formulates with precision and pushes
to its extreme consequences a conception familiar to common sense. As
speech dominates over thought, as external objects, which are common
to us all, are more important to us than the subjective states through
which each of us passes, we have everything to gain by objectifying
these states, by introducing into them, to the largest possible extent,
the representation of their external cause. And the more our knowledge
increases, the more we perceive the extensive behind the intensive,
quantity behind quality, the more also we tend to thrust the former
into the latter, and to treat our sensations as magnitudes. Physics,
whose particular function it is to calculate the external cause of our
internal states, takes the least possible interest in these states
themselves: constantly and deliberately it confuses them with their
cause. It thus encourages and even exaggerates the mistake which common
sense makes on the point. The moment was inevitably bound to come at
which science, familiarized with this confusion between quality and
quantity, between sensation and stimulus, should seek to measure the
one as it measures the other: such was the object of psychophysics. In
this bold attempt Fechner was encouraged by his adversaries themselves,
by the philosophers who speak of intensive magnitudes while declaring
that psychic states cannot be submitted to measurement. For if we
grant that one sensation can be stronger than another, and that this
inequality is inherent in the sensations themselves, independently
of all association of ideas, of all more or less conscious
consideration of number and space, it is natural to ask by how much
the first sensation exceeds the second, and to set up a quantitative
relation between their intensities. Nor is it any use to reply, as
the opponents of psychophysics sometimes do, that all measurement
implies superposition, and that there is no occasion to seek for a
numerical relation between intensities, which are not superposable
objects. For it will then be necessary to explain why one sensation
is said to be more intense than another, and how the conceptions
of greater and smaller can be applied to things which, it has just
been acknowledged, do not admit among themselves of the relations of
container to contained. If, in order to cut short any question of this
kind, we distinguish two kinds of quantity, the one intensive, which
admits only of a "more or less," the other extensive, which lends
itself to measurement, we are not far from siding with Fechner and
the psychophysicists. For, as soon as a thing is acknowledged to be
capable of increase and decrease, it seems natural to ask by how much
it decreases or by how much it increases. And, because a measurement
of this kind does not appear to be possible directly, it does not
follow that science cannot successfully accomplish it by some indirect
process, either by an integration of infinitely small elements, as
Fechner proposes, or by any other roundabout way. Either, then,
sensation is pure quality, or, if it is a magnitude, we ought to try to
measure it.


[Sidenote: Thus intensity judged (1) in representative states by an
estimate of the magnitude of the cause (2) in affective states by
multiplicity of psychic phenomena involved.]

To sum up what precedes, we have found the notion of intensity to
present itself under a double aspect, according as we study the states
of consciousness which represent an external cause, or those which
are self-sufficient. In the former case the perception of intensity
consists in a certain estimate of the magnitude of the cause means of
a certain quality in the effect: it is, as the Scottish philosophers
would have said, an acquired perception. In the second case, we give
the name of intensity to the larger or smaller number of simple psychic
phenomena which we conjecture to be involved in the fundamental state:
it is no longer an _acquired_ perception, but a _confused_ perception.
In fact, these two meanings of the word usually intermingle, because
the simpler phenomena involved in an emotion or an effort are generally
representative, and because the majority of representative states,
being at the same time affective, themselves include a multiplicity of
elementary psychic phenomena. The idea of intensity is thus situated
at the junction of two streams, one of which brings us the idea of
extensive magnitude from without, while the other brings us from
within, in fact from the very depths of consciousness, the image of an
inner multiplicity. Now, the point is to determine in what the latter
image consists, whether it is the same as that of number, or whether
it is quite different from it. In the following chapter we shall no
longer consider states of consciousness in isolation from one another,
but in their concrete multiplicity, in so far as they unfold themselves
in pure duration. And, in the same way as we have asked what would be
the intensity of a representative sensation if we did not introduce
into it the idea of its cause, we shall now have to inquire what the
multiplicity of our inner states becomes, what form duration assumes,
when the space in which it unfolds is eliminated. This second question
is even more important than the first. For, if the confusion of quality
with quantity were confined to each of the phenomena of consciousness
taken separately, it would give rise to obscurities, as we have just
seen, rather than to problems. But by invading the series of our
psychic states, by introducing space into our perception of duration,
it corrupts at its very source our feeling of outer and inner change,
of movement, and of freedom. Hence the paradoxes of the Eleatics, hence
the problem of free will. We shall insist rather on the second point;
but instead of seeking to solve the question, we shall show the mistake
of those who ask it.


[1] _Essays,_ (Library Edition, 1891), Vol. ii, p. 381.

[2] _The Senses and the Intellect,_4th ed., (1894), p. 79.

[3] _Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie,_2nd ed. (1880), Vol. i,
p. 375.

[4] W. James, _Le sentiment de l'effort (Critique philosophique,_ 1880,
Vol. ii,) cf. _Principles of Psychology,_ (1891), Vol. ii, chap, xxvi.

[5] _Functions of the Brain,_ 2nd ed. (1886), p. 386.

[6] _Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik,_ 1st ed. (1867), pp. 600-601.

[7] _Le mécanisme de l'attention._ Alcan, 1888.

[8] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., (1872), p. 74.

[9] "What is an Emotion?_" Mind,_1884, p. 189.

[10] _Principles of Psychology,_ 3rd. ed., (1890), Vol. i, p. 482.

[11] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., p. 78.

[12] _L'homme et l'intelligence,_ p. 36.

[13] Ibid. p. 37.

[14] Ibid. p. 43.

[15] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., pp. 72, 69, 70.

[16] C. Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement,_ Paris, 1887.

[17] _Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie,_ 2nd ed., (1880), Vol.
ii, p. 437.

[18] "On the Temperature Sense," _Mind,_ 1885.

[19] Rood, _Modern Chromatics,_(1879), pp. 181-187.

[20] _Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik,_ 1st ed. (1867), pp. 318-319.

[21] _Éléments de psychophysique._ Paris, 1883.

[22] See the account given of these experiments in the _Revue
philosophique,_ 1887, Vol. i, p. 71, and Vol. ii, p. 180.

[23] _Éléments de psychophysique,_ pp. 61, 69.

[24] In the particular case where we admit without restriction Weber's
Law ΔE/E=_const.,_ integration gives S=C log. E/Q. Q being a constant.
This is Fechner's "logarithmic law."

[25] Latterly it has been assumed that ΔS is proportional to S.

[26] _Revue scientifique,_ March 13 and April 24, 1875.




CHAPTER II


THE MULTIPLICITY OF CONSCIOUS STATES[1]


THE IDEA OF DURATION


[Sidenote: What is number?]

Number maybe defined in general as a collection of units, or, speaking
more exactly, as the synthesis of the one and the many. Every number
is one, since it is brought before the mind by a simple intuition and
is given a name; but the unity which attaches to it is that of a sum,
it covers a multiplicity of parts which can be considered separately.
Without attempting for the present any thorough examination of these
conceptions of unity and multiplicity, let us inquire whether the idea
of number does not imply the representation of something else as well.

[Sidenote: The units which make up a number must be identical.]

It is not enough to say that number is a collection of units; we must
add that these units are identical with one another, or at least that
they are assumed to be identical when they are counted. No doubt we
can count the sheep in a flock and say that there are fifty, although
they are all different from one another and are easily recognized by
the shepherd: but the reason is that we agree in that case to neglect
their individual differences and to take into account only what they
have in common. On the other hand, as soon as we fix our attention on
the particular features of objects or individuals, we can of course
make an enumeration of them, but not a total. We place ourselves at
these two very different points of view when we count the soldiers in
a battalion and when we call the roll. Hence we may conclude that the
idea of number implies the simple intuition of a multiplicity of parts
or units, which are absolutely alike.

[Sidenote: But they must also be distinct.]

And yet they must be somehow distinct from one another, since otherwise
they would merge into a single unit. Let us assume that all the sheep
in the flock are identical; they differ at least by the position which
they occupy in space, otherwise they would not form a flock. But now
let us even set aside the fifty sheep themselves and retain only the
idea of them. Either we include them all in the same image, and it
follows as a necessary consequence that we place them side by side in
an ideal space, or else we repeat fifty times in succession the image
of a single one, and in that case it does seem, indeed, that the series
lies in duration rather than in space. But we shall soon find out that
it cannot be so. For if we picture to ourselves each of the sheep in
the flock in succession and separately, we shall never have to do
with more than a single sheep. In order that the number should go on
increasing in proportion as we advance, we must retain the successive
images and set them alongside each of the new units which we picture to
ourselves: now, it is in space that such a juxtaposition takes place
and not in pure duration. In fact, it will be easily granted that
counting material objects means thinking all these objects together,
thereby leaving them in space. But does this intuition of space
accompany every idea of number, even of an abstract number?

[Sidenote: We can not form an image or idea of number without the
accompanying intuition of space.]

Any one can answer this question by reviewing the various forms which
the idea of number has assumed for him since his childhood. It will be
seen that we began by imagining e.g. a row of balls, that these balls
afterwards became points, and, finally, this image itself disappeared,
leaving behind it, as we say, nothing but _abstract_ number. But at
this very moment we ceased to have an image or even an idea of it; we
kept only the symbol which is necessary for reckoning and which is
the conventional way of _expressing_ number. For we can confidently
assert that 12 is half of 24 without thinking either the number 12 or
the number 24: indeed, as far as quick calculation is concerned, we
have everything to gain by not doing so. But as soon as we wish to
picture _number_ to ourselves, and not merely figures or words, we
are compelled to have recourse to an extended image. What leads to
misunderstanding on this point seems to be the habit we have fallen
into of counting in time rather than in space. In order to imagine the
number 50, for example, we repeat all the numbers starting from unity,
and when we have arrived at the fiftieth, we believe we have built up
the number in duration and in duration only. And there is no doubt that
in this way we have counted moments of duration rather than points in
space; but the question is whether we have not counted the moments
of duration by means of points in space. It is certainly possible to
perceive in time, and in time only, a succession which is nothing but
a succession, but not an addition, i.e. a succession which culminates
in a sum. For though we reach a sum by taking into account a succession
of different terms, yet it is necessary that each of these terms should
remain when we pass to the following, and should wait, so to speak, to
be added to the others: how could it wait, if it were nothing but an
instant of duration? And where could it wait if we did not localize it
in space? We involuntarily fix at a point in space each of the moments
which we count, and it is only on this condition that the abstract
units come to form a sum. No doubt it is possible, as we shall show
later, to conceive the successive moments of time independently of
space; but when we add to the present moment those which have preceded
it, as is the case when we are adding up units, we are not dealing
with these moments themselves, since they have vanished for ever, but
with the lasting traces which they seem to have left in space on their
passage through it. It is true that we generally dispense with this
mental image, and that, after having used it for the first two or three
numbers, it is enough to know that it would serve just as well for the
mental picturing of the others, if we needed it. But every clear idea
of number implies a visual image in space; and the direct study of the
units which go to form a discrete multiplicity will lead us to the same
conclusion on this point as the examination of number itself.

[Sidenote: All unity is the unity of a simple act of the mind. Unity
divisible only because regarded as extended in space.]

Every number is a collection of units, as we have said, and on the
other hand every number is itself a unit, in so far as it is a
synthesis of the units which compose it. But is the word unit taken in
the same sense in both cases? When we assert that number is a unit,
we understand by this that we master the whole of it by a simple
and indivisible intuition of the mind; this unity thus includes a
multiplicity, since it is the unity of a whole. But when we speak of
the units which go to form number, we no longer think of these units
as sums, but as pure, simple, irreducible units, intended to yield
the natural series of numbers by an indefinitely continued process of
accumulation. It seems, then, that there are two kinds of units, the
one ultimate, out of which a number is formed by a process of addition,
and the other provisional, the number so formed, which is multiple
in itself, and owes its unity to the simplicity of the act by which
the mind perceives it. And there is no doubt that, when we picture
the units which make up number, we believe that we are thinking of
indivisible components: this belief has a great deal to do with the
idea that it is possible to conceive number independently of space.
Nevertheless, by looking more closely into the matter, we shall see
that all unity is the unity of a simple act of the mind, and that, as
this is an act of unification, there must be some multiplicity for it
to unify. No doubt, at the moment at which I think each of these units
separately, I look upon it as indivisible, since I am determined to
think of its unity alone. But as soon as I put it aside in order to
pass to the next, I objectify it, and by that very deed I make it a
thing, that is to say, a multiplicity. To convince oneself of this, it
is enough to notice that the units by means of which arithmetic forms
numbers are _provisional_ units, which can be subdivided without limit,
and that each of them is the sum of fractional quantities as small and
as numerous as we like to imagine. How could we divide the unit, if
it were here that ultimate unity which characterizes a simple act of
the mind? How could we split it up into fractions whilst affirming its
unity, if we did not regard it implicitly as an extended object, one
in intuition but multiple in space? You will never get out of an idea
which you have formed anything which you have not put into it; and if
the unity by means of which you make up your number is the unity of
an act and not of an object, no effort of analysis will bring out of
it anything but unity pure and simple. No doubt, when you equate the
number 3 to the sum of 1 + 1 + 1, nothing prevents you from regarding
the units which compose it as indivisible: but the reason is that you
do not choose to make use of the multiplicity which is enclosed within
each of these units. Indeed, it is probable that the number 3 first
assumes to our mind this simpler shape, because we think rather of the
way in which we have obtained it than of the use which we might make
of it. But we soon perceive that, while all multiplication implies the
possibility of treating any number whatever as a provisional unit which
can be added to itself, inversely the units in their turn are true
numbers which are as big as we like, but are regarded as provisionally
indivisible for the purpose of compounding them with one another. Now,
the very admission that it is possible to divide the unit into as many
parts as we like, shows that we regard it as extended.

[Sidenote: Number in process of formation is discontinuous, but, when
formed, is invested with the continuity of space.]

For we must understand what is meant by the of number. It cannot
be denied that the formation or construction of a number implies
discontinuity. In other words, as we remarked above, each of the units
with which we form the number 3 seems to be indivisible _while_ we are
dealing with it, and we pass abruptly from one to the other. Again,
if we form the same number with halves, with quarters, with any units
whatever, these units, in so far as they serve to form the said number,
will still constitute elements which are provisionally indivisible, and
it is always by jerks, by sudden jumps, so to speak, that we advance
from one to the other. And the reason is that, in order to get a
number, we are compelled to fix our attention successively on each of
the units of which it is compounded. The indivisibility of the act by
which we conceive any one of them is then represented under the form
of a mathematical point which is separated from the following point
by an interval of space. But, while a series of mathematical points
arranged in empty space expresses fairly well the process by which we
form the idea of number, these mathematical points have a tendency to
develop into lines in proportion as our attention is diverted from
them, as if they were trying to reunite with one another. And when we
look at number in its finished state, this union is an accomplished
fact: the points have become lines, the divisions have been blotted
out, the whole displays all the characteristics of continuity. This is
why number, although we have formed it according to a definite law, can
be split up on any system we please. In a word, we must distinguish
between the unity which we think of and the unity which we set up as an
object after having thought of it, as also between number in process of
formation and number once formed. The unit is irreducible while we are
thinking it and number is discontinuous while we are building it up:
but, as soon as we consider number in its finished state, we objectify
it, and it then appears to be divisible to an unlimited extent. In
fact, we apply the term _subjective_ to what seems to be completely and
adequately known, and the term _objective_ to what is known in such a
way that a constantly increasing number of new impressions could be
substituted for the idea which we actually have of it. Thus, a complex
feeling will contain a fairly large number of simple elements; but,
as long as these elements do not stand out with perfect clearness,
we cannot say that they were completely realized, and, as soon as
consciousness has a distinct perception of them, the psychic state
which results from their synthesis will have changed for this very
reason. But there is no change in the general appearance of a body,
however it is analysed by thought, because these different analyses,
and an infinity of others, are already visible in the mental image
which we form of the body, though they are not realized: this actual
and not merely virtual perception of subdivisions in what is undivided
is just what we call objectivity. It then becomes easy to determine the
exact part played by the subjective and the objective in the idea of
number. What properly belongs to the mind is the indivisible process by
which it concentrates attention successively on the different parts of
a given space; but the parts which have thus been isolated remain in
order to join with the others, and, once the addition is made, they may
be broken up in any way whatever. They are therefore parts of space,
and space is, accordingly, the material with which the mind builds up
number, the medium in which the mind places it.

Properly speaking, it is arithmetic which teaches us to split up
without limit the units of which number consists. Common sense is very
much inclined to build up number with indivisibles.

[Sidenote: It follows that number is actually _thought of_ as a
juxtaposition in space.]

And this is easily understood, since the provisional simplicity of
the component units is just what they owe to the mind, and the latter
pays more attention to its own acts than to the material on which
it works. Science confines itself, here, to drawing our attention
to this material: if we did not already localize number in space,
science would certainly not succeed in making us transfer it thither.
From the beginning, therefore, we must have thought of number as of
a juxtaposition in space. This is the conclusion which we reached
at first, basing ourselves on the fact that all addition implies a
multiplicity of parts simultaneously perceived.

[Sidenote: Two kinds of multiplicity: (1) material objects, counted
in space; (2) conscious states, not countable unless symbolically
represented in space.]

Now, if this conception of number is granted, it will be seen that
everything is not counted in the same way, and that there are two very
different kinds of multiplicity. When we speak of material objects,
we refer to the possibility of seeing and touching them; we localize
them in space. In that case, no effort of the inventive faculty or
of symbolical representation is necessary in order to count them; we
have only to think them, at first separately, and then simultaneously,
within the very medium in which they come under our observation. The
case is no longer the same when we consider purely affective psychic
states, or even mental images other than those built up by means
of sight and touch. Here, the terms being no longer given in space,
it seems, _a priori,_ that we can hardly count them except by some
process of symbolical representation. In fact, we are well aware of a
representation of this kind when we are dealing with sensations the
cause of which is obviously situated in space. Thus, when we hear a
noise of steps in the street, we have a confused vision of somebody
walking along: each of the successive sounds is then localized at a
point in space where the passer-by might tread: we count our sensations
in the very space in which their tangible causes are ranged. Perhaps
some people count the successive strokes of a distant bell in a similar
way, their imagination pictures the bell coming and going; this spatial
sort of image is sufficient for the first two units, and the others
follow naturally. But most people's minds do not proceed in this way.
They range the successive sounds in an ideal space and then fancy
that they are counting them in pure duration. Yet we must be clear on
this point. The sounds of the bell certainly reach me one after the
other; but one of two alternatives must be true. Either I retain each
of these successive sensations in order to combine it with the others
and form a group which reminds me of an air or rhythm which I know: in
that case I do not _count_ the sounds, I limit myself to gathering,
so to speak, the qualitative impression produced by the whole series.
Or else I intend explicitly to count them, and then I shall have
to separate them, and this separation must take place within some
homogeneous medium in which the sounds, stripped of their qualities,
and in a manner emptied, leave traces of their presence which are
absolutely alike. The question now is, whether this medium is time or
space. But a moment of time, we repeat, cannot persist in order to be
added to others. If the sounds are separated, they must leave empty
intervals bet ween them. If we count them, the intervals must remain
though the sounds disappear: how could these intervals remain, if they
were pure duration and not space? It is in space, therefore, that the
operation takes place. It becomes, indeed, more and more difficult
as we penetrate further into the depths of consciousness. Here we
find ourselves confronted by a confused multiplicity of sensations
and feelings which analysis alone can distinguish. Their number is
identical with the number of the moments which we take up when we count
them; but these moments, as they can be added to one another, are
again points in space. Our final conclusion, therefore, is that there
are two kinds of multiplicity: that of material objects, to which the
conception of number is immediately applicable; and the multiplicity of
states of consciousness, which cannot be regarded as numerical without
the help of some symbolical representation, in which a necessary
element is _space._

[Sidenote: The impenetrability of matter is not a physical but a
logical necessity.]

As a matter of fact, each of us makes a distinction between these two
kinds of multiplicity whenever he speaks of the impenetrability of
matter. We sometimes set up impenetrability as a fundamental property
of bodies, known in the same way and put on the same level as e.g.
weight or resistance. But a purely negative property of this kind
cannot be revealed by our senses; indeed, certain experiments in
mixing and combining things might lead us to call it in question if
our minds were not already made up on the point. Try to picture one
body penetrating another: you will at once assume that there are empty
spaces in the one which will be occupied by the particles of the other;
these particles in their turn cannot penetrate one another unless one
of them divides in order to fill up the interstices of the other; and
our thought will prolong this operation indefinitely in preference to
picturing two bodies in the same place. Now, if impenetrability were
really a quality of matter which was known by the senses, it is not at
all clear why we should experience more difficulty in conceiving two
bodies merging into one another than a surface devoid of resistance
or a weightless fluid. In reality, it is not a physical but a logical
necessity which attaches to the proposition: "Two bodies cannot occupy
the same place at the same time" The contrary assertion involves an
absurdity which no conceivable experience could succeed in dispelling.

In a word, it implies a contradiction. But does not this amount to
recognizing that the very idea of the number 2, or, more generally,
of any number whatever, involves the idea of juxtaposition in space?
If impenetrability is generally regarded as a quality of matter, the
reason is that the idea of number is thought to be independent of the
idea of space. We thus believe that we are adding something to the
idea of two or more objects by saying that they cannot occupy the
same place: as if the idea of the number 2, even the abstract number,
were not already, as we have shown, that of two different positions
in space! Hence to assert the impenetrability of matter is simply to
recognize the interconnexion between the notions of number and space,
it is to state a property of number rather than of matter.--Yet, it
will be said, do we not count feelings, sensations, ideas, all of
which permeate one another, and each of which, for its part, takes
up the whole of the soul?--Yes, undoubtedly; but, just because they
permeate one another, we cannot count them unless we represent them
by homogeneous units which occupy separate positions in space and
consequently no longer permeate one another. Impenetrability thus makes
its appearance at the same time as number; and when we attribute this
quality to matter in order to distinguish it from everything which
is not matter, we simply state under another form the distinction
established above between extended objects, to which the conception of
number is immediately applicable, and states of consciousness, which
have first of all to be represented symbolically in space.

[Sidenote: Homogeneous time as the medium in which conscious states
form discrete series. This time is nothing but space, and pure duration
is something different.]

It is advisable to dwell on the last point. If, in order to count
states of consciousness, we have to represent them symbolically in
space, is it not likely that this symbolical representation will alter
the normal conditions of inner perception? Let us recall what we
said a short time ago about the intensity of certain psychic states.
Representative sensation, looked at in itself, is pure quality; but,
seen through the medium of extensity, this quality becomes in a
certain sense quantity, and is called intensity. In the same way, our
projection of our psychic states into space in order to form a discrete
multiplicity is likely to influence these states themselves and to
give them in reflective consciousness a new form, which immediate
perception did not attribute to them. Now, let us notice that when we
speak of _time,_ we generally think of a homogeneous medium in which
our conscious states are ranged alongside one another as in space, so
as to form a discrete multiplicity. Would not time, thus understood, be
to the multiplicity of our psychic states what intensity is to certain
of them,--a sign, a symbol, absolutely distinct from true duration?
Let us ask consciousness to isolate itself from the external world,
and, by a vigorous effort of abstraction, to become itself again.
We shall then put this question to it: does the multiplicity of our
conscious states bear the slightest resemblance to the multiplicity of
the units of a number? Has true duration anything to do with space?
Certainly, our analysis of the idea of number could not but make us
doubt this analogy, to say no more. For if time, as the reflective
consciousness represents it, is a medium in which our conscious states
form a discrete series so as to admit of being counted, and if on the
other hand our conception of number ends in spreading out in space
everything which can be directly counted, it is to be presumed that
time, understood in the sense of a medium in which we make distinctions
and count, is nothing but space. That which goes to confirm this
opinion is that we are compelled to borrow from space the images by
which we describe what the reflective consciousness feels about time
and even about succession; it follows that pure duration must be
something different. Such are the questions which we have been led to
ask by the very analysis of the notion of discrete multiplicity. But we
cannot throw any light upon them except by a direct study of the ideas
of space and time in their mutual relations.

[Sidenote: Does space exist independently of its contents, as Kant
held?]

We shall not lay too much stress on the question of the absolute
reality of space: perhaps we might as well ask whether space is or
is not in space. In short, our senses perceive the qualities of
bodies and space along with them: the great difficulty seems to have
been to discover whether extensity is an aspect of these physical
qualities--a quality of quality--or whether these qualities are
essentially unextended, space coming in as a later addition, but being
self-sufficient and existing without them. On the first hypothesis,
space would be reduced to an abstraction, or, speaking more correctly,
an extract; it would express the common element possessed by certain
sensations called representative. In the second case, space would be a
reality as solid as the sensations themselves, although of a different
order. We owe the exact formulation of this latter conception to Kant:
the theory which he works out in the Transcendental Aesthetic consists
in endowing space with an existence independent of its content, in
laying down as _de jure_ separable what each of us separates _de
facto,_ and in refusing to regard extensity as an abstraction like the
others. In this respect the Kantian conception of space differs less
than is usually imagined from the popular belief. Far from shaking our
faith in the reality of space, Kant has shown what it actually means
and has even justified it.

[Sidenote: The empiricists really agree with Kant for extensity can not
result from synthesis of unextended sensations without an act of the
mind.]

Moreover, the solution given by Kant does not seem to have been
seriously disputed since his time: indeed, it has forced itself,
sometimes without their knowledge, on the majority of those who
have approached the problem anew, whether nativists or empiricists.
Psychologists agree in assigning a Kantian origin to the nativistic
explanation of Johann Müller; but Lotze's hypothesis of local signs,
Bain's theory, and the more comprehensive explanation suggested by
Wundt, may seem at first quite independent of the Transcendental
Aesthetic. The authors of these theories seem indeed to have put aside
the problem of the nature of space, in order to investigate simply
by what process our sensations come to be situated in space and to
be set, so to speak, alongside one another: but this very question
shows that they regard sensations as inextensive and make a radical
distinction, just as Kant did, between the matter of representation
and its form. The conclusion to be drawn from the theories of Lotze
and Bain, and from Wundt's attempt to reconcile them, is that the
sensations by means of which we come to form the notion of space are
themselves unextended and simply qualitative: extensity is supposed
to result from their synthesis, as water from the combination of two
gases. The empirical or genetic explanations have thus taken up the
problem of space at the very point where Kant left it: Kant separated
space from its contents: the empiricists ask how these contents, which
are taken out of space by our thought, manage to get back again. It is
true that they have apparently disregarded the activity of the mind,
and that they are obviously inclined to regard the extensive form under
which we represent things as produced by a kind of alliance of the
sensations with one another: space, without being extracted from the
sensations, is supposed to result from their co-existence. But how can
we explain such an origination without the active intervention of the
mind? The extensive differs by hypothesis from the inextensive: and
even if we assume that extension is nothing but a relation between
inextensive terms, this relation must still be established by a mind
capable of thus associating several terms. It is no use quoting the
example of chemical combinations, in which the whole seems to assume,
of its own accord, a form and qualities which did not belong to any
of the elementary atoms. This form and these qualities owe their
origin just to the fact that we gather up the multiplicity of atoms
in a single perception: get rid of the mind which carries out this
synthesis and you will at once do away with the qualities, that is
to say, the aspect under which the synthesis of elementary parts is
presented to our consciousness. Thus inextensive sensations will remain
what they are, viz., inextensive sensations, if nothing be added to
them. For their co-existence to give rise to space, there must be an
act of the mind which takes them in all at the same time and sets them
in juxtaposition: this unique act is very like what Kant calls an _a
priori_ form of sensibility.

[Sidenote: This act consists in the intuition of an empty homogeneous
medium: perhaps peculiar to man and not shared by animals.]

If we now seek to characterize this act, we see that it consists
essentially in the intuition, or rather the conception, of an empty
homogeneous medium. For it is scarcely possible to give any other
definition of space: space is what enables us to distinguish a number
of identical and simultaneous sensations from one another; it is
thus a principle of differentiation other than that of qualitative
differentiation, and consequently it is a reality with no quality.
Someone may say, with the believers in the theory of local signs, that
simultaneous sensations are never identical, and that, in consequence
of the diversity of the organic elements which they affect, there are
no two points of a homogeneous surface which make the same impression
on the sight or the touch. We are quite ready to grant it, for if these
two points affected us in the same way, there would be no reason for
placing one of them on the right rather than on the left. But, just
because we afterwards interpret this difference of quality in the sense
of a difference of situation, it follows that we must have a clear
idea of a homogeneous medium, i.e. of a simultaneity of terms which,
although identical in quality, are yet distinct from one another. The
more you insist on the difference between the impressions made on
our retina by two points of a homogeneous surface, the more do you
thereby make room for the activity of the mind, which perceives under
the form of extensive homogeneity what is given it as qualitative
heterogeneity. No doubt, though the representation of a homogeneous
space grows out of an effort of the mind, there must be within the
qualities themselves which differentiate two sensations some reason
why they occupy this or that definite position in space. We must thus
distinguish between the perception of extensity and the conception of
space: they are no doubt implied in one another, but, the higher we
rise in the scale of intelligent beings, the more clearly do we meet
with the independent idea of a homogeneous space. It is therefore
doubtful whether animals perceive the external world quite as we do,
and especially whether they represent externality in the same way as
ourselves. Naturalists have pointed out, as a remarkable fact, the
surprising ease with which many vertebrates, and even some insects,
manage to find their way through space. Animals have been seen to
return almost in a straight line to their old home, pursuing a path
which was hitherto unknown to them over a distance which may amount
to several hundreds of miles. Attempts have been made to explain this
feeling of direction by sight or smell, and, more recently, by the
perception of magnetic currents which would enable the animal to take
its bearings like a living compass. This amounts to saying that space
is not so homogeneous for the animal as for us, and that determinations
of space, or directions, do not assume for it a purely geometrical
form. Each of these directions might appear to it with its own shade,
its peculiar quality. We shall understand how a perception of this
kind is possible if we remember that we ourselves distinguish our right
from our left by a natural feeling, and that these two parts of our own
extensity do then appear to us as if they bore a different _quality;_
in fact, this is the very reason why we cannot give a proper definition
of right and left. In truth, qualitative differences exist everywhere
in nature, and I do not see why two concrete directions should not be
as marked in immediate perception as two colours. But the conception of
an empty homogeneous medium is something far more extraordinary, being
a kind of reaction against that heterogeneity which is the very ground
of our experience. Therefore, instead of saying that animals have a
special sense of direction, we may as well say that men have a special
faculty of perceiving or conceiving a space without quality. This
faculty is not the faculty of abstraction: indeed, if we notice that
abstraction assumes clean-cut distinctions and a kind of externality
of the concepts or their symbols with regard to one another, we shall
find that the faculty of abstraction already implies the intuition
of a homogeneous medium. What we must say is that we have to do
with two different kinds of reality, the one heterogeneous, that of
sensible qualities, the other homogeneous, namely space. This latter,
clearly conceived by the human intellect, enables us to use clean-cut
distinctions, to count, to abstract, and perhaps also to speak.

[Sidenote: Time, in so far as it is a homogenious medium, and not
concrete duration, is reducible to space.]

Now, if space is to be defined as the homogeneous, it seems that
inversely every homogeneous and unbounded medium will be space. For,
homogeneity here consisting in the absence of every quality, it is hard
to see how two forms of the homogeneous could be distinguished from
one another. Nevertheless it is generally agreed to regard time as an
unbounded medium, different from space but homogeneous like the latter:
the homogeneous is thus supposed to take two forms, according as its
contents co-exist or follow one another. It is true that, when we make
time a homogeneous medium in which conscious states unfold themselves,
we take it to be given all at once, which amounts to saying that we
abstract it from duration. This simple consideration ought to warn us
that we are thus unwittingly falling back upon space, and really giving
up time. Moreover, we can understand that material objects, being
exterior to one another and to ourselves, derive both exteriorities
from the homogeneity of a medium which inserts intervals between them
and sets off their outlines: but states of consciousness, even when
successive, permeate one another, and in the simplest of them the whole
soul can be reflected. We may therefore surmise that time, conceived
under the form of a homogeneous medium, is some spurious concept,
due to the trespassing of the idea of space upon the field of pure
consciousness. At any rate we cannot finally admit two forms of the
homogeneous, time and space, without first seeking whether one of them
cannot be reduced to the other. Now, externality is the distinguishing
mark of things which occupy space, while states of consciousness are
not essentially external to one another, and become so only by being
spread out in time, regarded as a homogeneous medium. If, then, one of
these two supposed forms of the homogeneous, namely time and space,
is derived from the other, we can surmise _a priori_ that the idea of
space is the fundamental datum. But, misled by the apparent simplicity
of the idea of time, the philosophers who have tried to reduce one of
these ideas to the other have thought that they could make extensity
out of duration. While showing how they have been misled, we shall see
that time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous
medium, is nothing but the ghost of space haunting the reflective
consciousness.

[Sidenote: Mistake of the attempt to derive relations of extensity from
those of succession. The conception of pure "duration."]

The English school tries, in fact, to reduce relations of extensity to
more or less complex relations of succession in time. When, with our
eyes shut, we run our hands along a surface, the rubbing of our fingers
against the surface, and especially the varied play of our joints,
provide a series of sensations, which differ only by their _qualities_
and which exhibit a certain order in time. Moreover, experience teaches
us that this series can be reversed, that we can, by an effort of
a different kind (or, as we shall call it later, _in an opposite
direction),_ obtain the same sensations over again in an inverse order:
relations of position in space might then be defined as reversible
relations of succession in time. But such a definition involves a
vicious circle, or at least a very superficial idea of time. There are,
indeed, as we shall show a little later, two possible conceptions of
time, the one free from all alloy, the other surreptitiously bringing
in the idea of space. Pure duration is the form which the succession of
our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself _live,_ when it
refrains from separating its present state from its former states. For
this purpose it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation
or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer _endure._ Nor
need it forget its former states: it is enough that, in recalling these
states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point
alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states
into an organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune,
melting, so to speak, into one another. Might it not be said that,
even if these notes succeed one another, yet we perceive them in one
another, and that their totality may be compared to a living being
whose parts, although distinct, permeate one another just because they
are so closely connected? The proof is that, if we interrupt the rhythm
by dwelling longer than is right on one note of the tune, it is not
its exaggerated length, as length, which will warn us of our mistake,
but the qualitative change thereby caused in the whole of the musical
phrase. We can thus conceive of succession without distinction, and
think of it as a mutual penetration, an interconnexion and organization
of elements, each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be
distinguished or isolated from it except by abstract thought. Such
is the account of duration which would be given by a being who was
ever the same and ever changing, and who had no idea of space. But,
familiar with the latter idea and indeed beset by it, we introduce it
unwittingly into our feeling of pure succession; we set our states
of consciousness side by side in such a way as to perceive them
simultaneously, no longer in one another, but alongside one another;
in a word, we project time into space, we express duration in terms of
extensity, and succession thus takes the form of a continuous line or a
chain, the parts of which touch without penetrating one another. Note
that the mental image thus shaped implies the perception, no longer
successive, but simultaneous, of a _before_ and _after,_ and that it
would be a contradiction to suppose a succession which was only a
succession, and which nevertheless was contained in one and the same
instant. Now, when we speak of an _order_ of succession in duration,
and of the reversibility of this order, is the succession we are
dealing with pure succession, such as we have just defined it, without
any admixture of extensity, or is it succession developing in space, in
such a way that we can take in at once a number of elements which are
both distinct and set side by side? There is no doubt about the answer:
we could not introduce _order_ among terms without first distinguishing
them and then comparing the places which they occupy; hence we must
perceive them as multiple, simultaneous and distinct; in a word, we set
them side by side, and if we introduce an order in what is successive,
the reason is that succession is converted into simultaneity and
is projected into space. In short, when the movement of my finger
along a surface or a line provides me with a series of sensations of
different qualities, one of two things happens: either I picture these
sensations to myself as in duration only, and in that case they succeed
one another in such a way that I cannot at a given moment perceive a
number of them as simultaneous and yet distinct; or else I make out an
order of succession, but in that case I display the faculty not only of
perceiving a succession of elements, but also of setting them out in
line after having distinguished them: in a word, I already possess the
idea of space. Hence the idea of a reversible series in duration, or
even simply of a certain _order_ of succession in time, itself implies
the representation of space, and cannot be used to define it.

[Sidenote: Succession cannot be symbolized as a line without
introducing the idea of space of three dimensions.]

To give this argument a stricter form, let us imagine a straight line
of unlimited length, and on this line a material point A, which
moves. If this point were conscious of itself, it would feel itself
change, since it moves: it would perceive a succession; but would
this succession assume for it the form of a line? No doubt it would,
if it could rise, so to speak, above the line which it traverses, and
perceive simultaneously several points of it in juxtaposition: but
by doing so it would form the idea of space, and it is in space and
not in pure duration that it would see displayed the changes which it
undergoes. We here put our finger on the mistake of those who regard
pure duration as something similar to space, but of a simpler nature.
They are fond of setting psychic states side by side, of forming a
chain or a line of them, and do not imagine that they are introducing
into this operation the idea of space properly so called, the idea of
space in its totality, because space is a medium of three dimensions.
But how can they fail to notice that, in order to perceive a line as
a line, it is necessary to take up a position outside it, to take
account of the void which surrounds it, and consequently to think
a space of three dimensions? If our conscious point A does not yet
possess the idea of space--and this is the hypothesis which we have
agreed to adopt--the succession of states through which it passes
cannot assume for it the form of a line; but its sensations will add
themselves dynamically to one another and will organize themselves,
like the successive notes of a tune by which we allow ourselves to be
lulled and soothed. In a word, pure duration might well be nothing but
a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one
another, without precise outlines, without any tendency to externalize
themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with
number: it would be pure heterogeneity. But for the present we shall
not insist upon this point; it is enough for us to have shown that,
from the moment when you attribute the least homogeneity to duration,
you surreptitiously introduce space.

[Sidenote: Pure duration is wholly qualitative. It cannot be measured
unless symbolically represented in space.]

It is true that we count successive moments of duration, and that,
because of its relations with number, time at first seems to us to
be a measurable magnitude, just like space. But there is here an
important distinction to be made. I say, e.g., that a minute has just
elapsed, and I mean by this that a pendulum, beating the seconds, has
completed sixty oscillations. If I picture these sixty oscillations
to myself all at once by a single mental perception, I exclude by
hypothesis the idea of a succession. I do not think of sixty strokes
which succeed one another, but of sixty points on a fixed line, each
one of which symbolizes, so to speak, an oscillation of the pendulum.
If, on the other hand, I wish to picture these sixty oscillations in
succession, but without altering the way they are produced in space,
I shall be compelled to think of each oscillation to the exclusion
of the recollection of the preceding one, for space has preserved no
trace of it; but by doing so I shall condemn myself to remain for ever
in the present; I shall give up the attempt to think a succession or a
duration. Now if, finally, I retain the recollection of the preceding
oscillation together with the image of the present oscillation, one of
two things will happen. Either I shall set the two images side by side,
and we then fall back on our first hypothesis, or I shall perceive one
in the other, each permeating the other and organizing themselves like
the notes of a tune, so as to form what we shall call a continuous or
qualitative multiplicity with no resemblance to number. I shall thus
get the image of pure duration; but I shall have entirely got rid of
the idea of a homogeneous medium or a measurable quantity. By carefully
examining our consciousness we shall recognize that it proceeds in this
way whenever it refrains from representing duration symbolically. When
the regular oscillations of the pendulum make us sleepy, is it the last
sound heard, the last movement perceived, which produces this effect?
No, undoubtedly not, for why then should not the first have done the
same? Is it the recollection of the preceding sounds or movements, set
in juxtaposition to the last one? But this same recollection, if it
is later on set in juxtaposition to a single sound or movement, will
remain without effect. Hence we must admit that the sounds combined
with one another and acted, not by their quantity as quantity, but
by the quality which their quantity exhibited, i.e. by the rhythmic
organization of the whole. Could the effect of a slight but continuous
stimulation be understood in any other way? If the sensation remained
always the same, it would continue to be indefinitely slight and
indefinitely bearable. But the fact is that each increase of
stimulation is taken up into the preceding stimulations, and that the
whole produces on us the effect of a musical phrase which is constantly
on the point of ending and constantly altered in its totality by the
addition of some new note. If we assert that it is always the _same_
sensation, the reason is that we are thinking, not of the sensation
itself, but of its objective cause situated in space. We then set it
out in space in its turn, and in place of an organism which develops,
in place of changes which permeate one another, we perceive one and
the same sensation stretching itself out lengthwise, so to speak,
and setting itself in juxtaposition to itself without limit. Pure
duration, that which consciousness perceives, must thus be reckoned
among the so-called intensive magnitudes, if intensities can be called
magnitudes: strictly speaking, however, it is not a quantity, and as
soon as we try to measure it, we unwittingly replace it by space.

[Sidenote: Time, as dealt with by the astronomer and the physicist,
does indeed _seem_ to be measurable and therefore homogeneous.]

But we find it extraordinarily difficult to think of duration in its
original purity; this is due, no doubt, to the fact that we do not
_endure_ alone, external objects, it seems, _endure_ as we do, and
time, regarded from this point of view, has every appearance of a
homogeneous medium. Not only do the moments of this duration seem to
be external to one another, like bodies in space, but the movement
perceived by our senses is the, so to speak, palpable sign of a
homogeneous and measurable duration. Nay more, time enters into the
formulae of mechanics, into the calculations of the astronomer, and
even of the physicist, under the form of a quantity. We measure the
velocity of a movement, implying that time itself is a magnitude.
Indeed, the analysis which we have just attempted requires to be
completed, for if duration properly so-called cannot be measured,
what is it that is measured by the oscillations of the pendulum?
Granted that inner duration, perceived by consciousness, is nothing
else but the melting of states of consciousness into one another, and
the gradual growth of the ego, it will be said, notwithstanding, that
the time which the astronomer introduces into his formulae, the time
which our clocks divide into equal portions, this time, at least, is
something different: it must be a measurable and therefore homogeneous
magnitude.--It is nothing of the sort, however, and a close examination
will dispel this last illusion.

[Sidenote: But what we call measuring time is nothing but counting
simultaneities. The clock taken as an illustration.]

When I follow with my eyes on the dial of a clock the movement of
the hand which corresponds to the oscillations of the pendulum, I
do not measure duration, as seems to be thought; I merely count
simultaneities, which is very different. Outside of me, in space, there
is never more than a single position of the hand and the pendulum,
for nothing is left of the past positions. Within myself a process
of organization or interpenetration of conscious states is going on,
which constitutes true duration. It is because I _endure_ in this way
that I picture to myself what I call the past oscillations of the
pendulum at the same time as I perceive the present oscillation. Now,
let us withdraw for a moment the ego which thinks these so-called
successive oscillations: there will never be more than a single
oscillation, and indeed only a single position, of the pendulum, and
hence no duration. Withdraw, on the other hand, the pendulum and its
oscillations; there will no longer be anything but the heterogeneous
duration of the ego, without moments external to one another, without
relation to number. Thus, within our ego, there is succession without
mutual externality; outside the ego, in pure space, mutual externality
without succession: mutual externality, since the present oscillation
is radically distinct from the previous oscillation, which no longer
exists; but no succession, since succession exists solely for a
conscious spectator who keeps the past in mind and sets the two
oscillations or their symbols side by side in an auxiliary space.
Now, between this succession without externality and this externality
without succession, a kind of exchange takes place, very similar to
what physicists call the phenomenon of endosmosis. As the successive
phases of our conscious life, although interpenetrating, correspond
individually to an oscillation of the pendulum which occurs at the same
time, and as, moreover, these oscillations are sharply distinguished
from one another, we get into the habit of setting up the same
distinction between the successive moments of our conscious life: the
oscillations of the pendulum break it up, so to speak, into parts
external to one another: hence the mistaken idea of a homogeneous inner
duration, similar to space, the moments of which are identical and
follow, without penetrating, one another. But, on the other hand, the
oscillations of the pendulum, which are distinct only because one has
disappeared when the other appears on the scene, profit, as it were,
from the influence which they have thus exercised over our conscious
life. Owing to the fact that our consciousness has organized them as a
whole in memory, they are first preserved and afterwards disposed in
a series: in a word, we create for them a fourth dimension of space,
which we call homogeneous time, and which enables the movement of the
pendulum, although taking place at one spot, to be continually set in
juxtaposition to itself. Now, if we try to determine the exact part
played by the real and the imaginary in this very complex process,
this is what we find. There is a real space, without duration, in
which phenomena appear and disappear simultaneously with our states of
consciousness. There is a real duration, the heterogeneous moments of
which permeate one another; each moment, however, can be brought into
relation with a state of the external world which is contemporaneous
with it, and can be separated from the other moments in consequence
of this very process. The comparison of these two realities gives
rise to a symbolical representation of duration, derived from space.
Duration thus assumes the illusory form of a homogeneous medium, and
the connecting link between these two terms, space and duration, is
simultaneity, which might be defined as the intersection of time and
space.

[Sidenote: Two elements in motion: (1) the space traversed, which is
homogeneous and divisible; (2) the act of traversing, indivisible and
real only for consciousness.]

If we analyse in the same way the concept of motion, the living symbol
of this seemingly homogeneous duration, we shall be led to make a
distinction of the same kind. We generally say that a movement takes
place _in_ space, and when we assert that motion is homogeneous and
divisible, it is of the space traversed that we are thinking, as if
it were interchangeable with the motion itself. Now, if we reflect
further, we shall see that the successive positions of the moving
body really do occupy space, but that the process by which it passes
from one position to the other, a process which occupies duration and
which has no reality except for a conscious spectator, eludes space.
We have to do here not with an _object_ but with a _progress_: motion,
in so far as it is a passage from one point to another, is a mental
synthesis, a psychic and therefore unextended process. Space contains
only parts of space, and at whatever point of space we consider the
moving body, we shall get only a position. If consciousness is aware
of anything more than positions, the reason is that it keeps the
successive positions in mind and synthesizes them. But how does it
carry out a synthesis of this kind? It cannot be by a fresh setting out
of these same positions in a homogeneous medium, for a fresh synthesis
would be necessary to connect the positions with one another, and so
on indefinitely. We are thus compelled to admit that we have here to
do with a synthesis which is, so to speak, qualitative, a gradual
organization of our successive sensations, a unity resembling that
of a phrase in a melody. This is just the idea of motion which we
form when we think of it by itself, when, so to speak, from motion we
extract mobility. Think of what you experience on suddenly perceiving
a shooting star: in this extremely rapid motion there is a natural and
instinctive separation between the space traversed, which appears to
you under the form of a line of fire, and the absolutely indivisible
sensation of motion or mobility. A rapid gesture, made with one's eyes
shut, will assume for consciousness the form of a purely qualitative
sensation as long as there is no thought of the space traversed. In
a word, there are two elements to be distinguished in motion, the
space traversed and the act by which we traverse it, the successive
positions and the synthesis of these positions. The first of these
elements is a homogeneous quantity: the second has no reality except in
a consciousness: it is a quality or an intensity, whichever you prefer.
But here again we meet with a case of endosmosis, an intermingling
of the purely intensive sensation of mobility with the extensive
representation of the space traversed. On the one hand we attribute to
the motion the divisibility of the space which it traverses, forgetting
that it is quite possible to divide an _object,_ but not an _act_: and
on the other hand we accustom ourselves to projecting this act itself
into space, to applying it to the whole of the line which the moving
body traverses, in a word, to solidifying it: as if this localizing of
a _progress_ in space did not amount to asserting that, even outside
consciousness, the past co-exists along with the present!

[Sidenote: The common confusion between motion and the space traversed
gives rise to the paradoxes of the Eleatics.]

It is to this confusion between motion and the space traversed that the
paradoxes of the Eleatics are due; for the interval which separates two
points is infinitely divisible, and if motion consisted of parts like
those of the interval itself, the interval would never be crossed.
But the truth is that each of Achilles' steps is a simple indivisible
act, and that, after a given number of these acts, Achilles will have
passed the tortoise. The mistake of the Eleatics arises from their
identification of this series of acts, each of which is _of a definite
kind_ and _indivisible,_ with the homogeneous space which underlies
them. As this space can be divided and put together again according
to any law whatever, they think they are justified in reconstructing
Achilles' whole movement, not with Achilles' kind of step, but with
the tortoise's kind: in place of Achilles pursuing the tortoise they
really put two tortoises, regulated by each other, two tortoises which
agree to make the same kind of steps or simultaneous acts, so as
never to catch one another. Why does Achilles outstrip the tortoise?
Because each of Achilles' steps and each of the tortoise's steps are
indivisible acts in so far as they are movements, and are different
magnitudes in so far as they are space: so that addition will soon give
a greater length for the space traversed by Achilles than is obtained
by adding together the space traversed by the tortoise and the handicap
with which it started. This is what Zeno leaves out of account when he
reconstructs the movement of Achilles according to the same law as the
movement of the tortoise, forgetting that space alone can be divided
and put together again in any way we like, and thus confusing space
with motion. Hence we do not think it necessary to admit, even after
the acute and profound analysis of a contemporary thinker,[2] that
the meeting of the two moving bodies implies a discrepancy between
real and imaginary motion, between _space in itself_ and indefinitely
divisible space, between concrete time and abstract time. Why resort
to a metaphysical hypothesis, however ingenious, about the nature of
space, time, and motion, when immediate intuition shows us motion
within duration, and duration outside space? There is no need to assume
a limit to the divisibility of concrete space; we can admit that it
is infinitely divisible, provided that we make a distinction between
the simultaneous positions of the two moving bodies, which are in
fact in space, and their movements, which cannot occupy space, being
duration rather than extent, quality and not quantity. To measure the
velocity of a movement, as we shall see, is simply to ascertain a
simultaneity; to introduce this velocity into calculations is simply to
use a convenient means of anticipating a simultaneity. Thus mathematics
confines itself to its own province as long as it is occupied with
determining the simultaneous positions of Achilles and the tortoise
at a given moment, or when it admits _à priori_ that the two moving
bodies meet at a point _X_--a meeting which is itself a simultaneity.
But it goes beyond its province when it claims to reconstruct what
takes place in the interval between two simultaneities; or rather it
is inevitably led, even then, to consider simultaneities once more,
fresh simultaneities, the indefinitely increasing number of which ought
to be a warning that we cannot make movement out of immobilities, nor
time out of space. In short, just as nothing will be found homogeneous
in duration except a symbolical medium with no duration at all, namely
space, in which simultaneities are set out in line, in the same way no
homogeneous element will be found in motion except that which least
belongs to it, the traversed space, which is motionless.

[Sidenote: Science has to eliminate duration from time and mobility
from motion before it can deal with them.]

Now, just for this reason, science cannot deal with time and motion
except on condition of first eliminating the essential and qualitative
element--of time, duration, and of motion, mobility. We may easily
convince ourselves of this by examining the part played in astronomy
and mechanics by considerations of time, motion, and velocity.

Treatises on mechanics are careful to announce that they do not intend
to define duration itself but only the equality of two durations. "Two
intervals of time are equal when two identical bodies, in identical
conditions at the beginning of each of these intervals and subject to
the same actions and influences of every kind, have traversed the same
space at the end of these intervals." In other words, we are to note
the exact moment at which the motion begins, i.e. the coincidence of
an external change with one of our psychic states; we are to note the
moment at which the motion ends, that is to say, another simultaneity;
finally we are to measure the space traversed, the only thing, in
fact, which is really measurable. Hence there is no question here
of duration, but only of space and simultaneities. To announce that
something will take place at the end of a time _t_ is to declare
that consciousness will note between now and then a number _t_ of
simultaneities of a certain kind. And we must not be led astray by the
words "between now and then," for the interval of duration exists only
for us and on account of the interpenetration of our conscious states.
Outside ourselves we should find only space, and consequently nothing
but simultaneities, of which we could not even say that they are
objectively successive, since succession can only be thought through
_comparing_ the present with the past.--That the interval of duration
itself cannot be taken into account by science is proved by the fact
that, if all the motions of the universe took place twice or thrice as
quickly, there would be nothing to alter either in our formulae or in
the figures which are to be found in them. Consciousness would have
an indefinable and as it were qualitative impression of the change,
but the change would not make itself felt outside consciousness, since
the same number of simultaneities would go on taking place in space.
We shall see, later on, that when the astronomer predicts, e.g., an
eclipse, he does something of this kind: he shortens infinitely the
intervals of duration, as these do not count for science, and thus
perceives in a very short time--a few seconds at the most--a succession
of simultaneities which may take up several centuries for the concrete
consciousness, compelled to live through the intervals instead of
merely counting their extremities.

[Sidenote: This is seen in the definition of _velocity._]

A direct analysis of the notion of velocity will bring us to the same
conclusion. Mechanics gets this notion through a series of ideas, the
connexion of which it is easy enough to trace. It first builds up the
idea of uniform motion by picturing, on the one hand, the path AB of a
certain moving body, and, on the other, a physical phenomenon which is
repeated indefinitely under the same conditions, e.g., a stone always
falling from the same height on to the same spot. If we mark on the
path AB the points M, Ν, P ... reached by the moving body at each of
the moments when the stone touches the ground, and if the intervals
AM, MN and NP are found to be equal to one another, the motion will
be said to be uniform: and any one of these intervals will be called
the velocity of the moving body, provided that it is agreed to adopt
as unit of duration the physical phenomenon which has been chosen as
the term of comparison. Thus, the velocity of a uniform motion is
defined by mechanics without appealing to any other notions than those
of space and simultaneity. Now let us turn to the case of a variable
motion, that is, to the case when the elements AM, MN, NP ... are found
to be unequal. In order to define the velocity of the moving body A
at the point M, we shall only have to imagine an unlimited number of
moving bodies A*1, A*2, A*3 ... all moving uniformly with velocities
_v_*1, _v_*2, _v_*3 ... which are arranged, e.g., in an ascending scale
and which correspond to all possible magnitudes. Let us then consider
on the path of the moving body _A_ two points M' and M", situated on
either side of the point M but very near it. At the same time as this
moving body reaches the points M', M, M", the other moving bodies
reach points M'*1 M*1 M"*1, M'*2 M*2 M"*2 ... on their respective
paths; and there must be two moving bodies Ah and Ap such that we
have on the one hand M' M= M'*h M*h and on the other hand M M"= M*p
M"*p. We shall then agree to say that the velocity of the moving body
A at the point M lies between _v_*h and _v_*p. But nothing prevents
our assuming that the points M' and M" are still nearer the point M,
and it will then be necessary to replace _v_*h and _v_*p by two fresh
velocities _v_*i and _v_*n, the one greater than _v_*h and the other
less than _v_*p. And in proportion as we reduce the two intervals M'M
and MM", we shall lessen the difference between the velocities of the
uniform corresponding movements. Now, the two intervals being capable
of decreasing right down to zero, there evidently exists between _v_*i
and _v_*n a certain velocity _v_*m, such that the difference between
this velocity and _v_*h, _v_*i ... on the one hand, and _v_*p, _v_*n ...
on the other, can become smaller than any given quantity. It is this
common limit _v_*m which we shall call the velocity of the moving body
A at the point M.--Now, in this analysis of variable motion, as in
that of uniform motion, it is a question only of spaces once traversed
and of simultaneous positions once reached. We were thus justified in
saying that, while all that mechanics retains of time is simultaneity,
all that it retains of motion itself--restricted, as it is, to a
_measurement_ of motion--is immobility.

[Characters preceded by '*' are in "subscript" in original.]

[Sidenote: Mechanics deals with equations, which express something
finished, and not processes, such as duration and motion.]

This result might have been foreseen by noticing that mechanics
necessarily deals with equations, and that an algebraic equation always
expresses something already done. Now, it is of the very essence
of duration and motion, as they appear to our consciousness, to be
something that is unceasingly being done; thus algebra can represent
the results gained at a certain moment of duration and the positions
occupied by a certain moving body in space, but not duration and
motion themselves. Mathematics may, indeed, increase the number of
simultaneities and positions which it takes into consideration by
making the intervals very small: it may even, by using the differential
instead of the difference, show that it is possible to increase without
limit the number of these intervals of duration. Nevertheless, however
small the interval is supposed to be, it is the extremity of the
interval at which mathematics always places itself. As for the interval
itself, as for the duration and the motion, they are necessarily left
out of the equation. The reason is that duration and motion are mental
syntheses, and not objects; that, although the moving body occupies,
one after the other, points on a line, motion itself has nothing to
do with a line; and finally that, although the positions occupied by
the moving body vary with the different moments of duration, though it
even creates distinct moments by the mere fact of occupying different
positions, duration properly so called has no moments which are
identical or external to one another, being essentially heterogeneous,
continuous, and with no analogy to number.

[Sidenote: Conclusion: space alone is homogeneous: duration and
succession belong not to the external world, but to the conscious mind.]

It follows from this analysis that space alone is homogeneous, that
objects in space form a discrete multiplicity, and that every discrete
multiplicity is got by a process of unfolding in space. It also follows
that there is neither duration nor even succession in space, if we
give to these words the meaning in which consciousness takes them:
each of the so-called successive states of the external world exists
alone; their multiplicity is real only for a consciousness that can
first retain them and then set them side by side by externalizing
them in relation to one another. If it retains them, it is because
these distinct states of the external world give rise to states of
consciousness which permeate one another, imperceptibly organize
themselves into a whole, and bind the past to the present by this
very process of connexion. If it externalizes them in relation to one
another, the reason is that, thinking of their radical distinctness
(the one having ceased to be when the other appears on the scene), it
perceives them under the form of a discrete multiplicity, which amounts
to setting them out in line, in the space in which each of them existed
separately. The space employed for this purpose is just that which is
called homogeneous time.

[Sidenote: Two kinds of multiplicity: two senses of the word
"distinguish," the one qualitative and the other quantitative.]

But another conclusion results from this analysis, namely, that
the multiplicity of conscious states, regarded in its original
purity, is not at all like the discrete multiplicity which goes to
form a number. In such a case there is, as we said, a qualitative
multiplicity. In short, we must admit two kinds of multiplicity, two
possible senses of the word "distinguish," two conceptions, the one
qualitative and the other quantitative, of the difference between
_same_ and _other._ Sometimes this multiplicity, this distinctness,
this heterogeneity contains number only potentially, as Aristotle would
have said. Consciousness, then, makes a qualitative discrimination
without any further thought of counting the qualities or even of
distinguishing them as _several._ In such a case we have multiplicity
without quantity. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is a question of
a multiplicity of terms which are counted or which are conceived as
capable of being counted; but we think then of the possibility of
externalizing them in relation to one another, we set them out in
space. Unfortunately, we are so accustomed to illustrate one of these
two meanings of the same word by the other, and even to perceive
the one in the other, that we find it extraordinarily difficult to
distinguish between them or at least to express this distinction in
words. Thus I said that several conscious states are organized into a
whole, permeate one another, gradually gain a richer content, and might
thus give any one ignorant of space the feeling of pure duration; but
the very use of the word "several" shows that I had already isolated
these states, externalized them in relation to one another, and, in a
word, set them side by side; thus, by the very language which I was
compelled to use, I betrayed the deeply ingrained habit of setting out
time in space. From this spatial setting out, already accomplished, we
are compelled to borrow the terms which we use to describe the state
of a mind which has not yet accomplished it: these terms are thus
misleading from the very beginning, and the idea of a multiplicity
without relation to number or space, although clear for pure reflective
thought, cannot be translated into the language of common sense. And
yet we cannot even form the idea of discrete multiplicity without
considering at the same time a qualitative multiplicity. When we
explicitly count units by stringing them along a spatial line, is it
not the case that, alongside this addition of identical terms standing
out from a homogeneous background, an organization of these units is
going on in the depths of the soul, a wholly dynamic process, not
unlike the purely qualitative way in which an anvil, if it could feel,
would realize a series of blows from a hammer? In this sense we might
almost say that the numbers in daily use have each their emotional
equivalent. Tradesmen are well aware of it, and instead of indicating
the price of an object by a round number of shillings, they will mark
the next smaller number, leaving themselves to insert afterwards a
sufficient number of pence and farthings. In a word, the process by
which we count units and make them into a discrete multiplicity has
two sides; on the one hand we assume that they are identical, which is
conceivable only on condition that these units are ranged alongside
each other in a homogeneous medium; but on the other hand the third
unit, for example, when added to the other two, alters the nature,
the appearance and, as it were, the rhythm of the whole; without this
interpenetration and this, so to speak, qualitative progress, no
addition would be possible. Hence it is through the quality of quantity
that we form the idea of quantity without quality.

[Sidenote: Our successive sensations are regarded as mutually external,
like their objective causes, and this reacts on our deeper psychic
life.]

It is therefore obvious that, if it did not betake itself to a
symbolical substitute, our consciousness our successive would never
regard time as a homogeneous medium, in which the terms of a succession
remain outside one another. But we naturally reach this symbolical
representation by the mere fact that, in a series of identical terms,
each term assumes a double aspect for our consciousness: one aspect
which is the same for all of them, since we are thinking then of
the sameness of the external object, and another aspect which is
characteristic of each of them, because the supervening of each term
brings about a new organization of the whole. Hence the possibility of
setting out in space, under the form of numerical multiplicity, what
we have called a qualitative multiplicity, and of regarding the one
as the equivalent of the other. Now, this twofold process is nowhere
accomplished so easily as in the perception of the external phenomenon
which takes for us the form of motion. Here we certainly have a series
of identical terms, since it is always the same moving body; but, on
the other hand, the synthesis carried out by our consciousness between
the actual position and what our memory calls the former positions,
causes these images to permeate, complete, and, so to speak, continue
one another. Hence, it is principally by the help of motion that
duration assumes the form of a homogeneous medium, and that time is
projected into space. But, even if we leave out motion, any repetition
of a well-marked external phenomenon would suggest to consciousness
the same mode of representation. Thus, when we hear a series of
blows of a hammer, the sounds form an indivisible melody in so far
as they are pure sensations, and, here again, give rise to a dynamic
progress; but, knowing that the same objective cause is at work, we
cut up this progress into phases which we then regard as identical;
and this multiplicity of elements no longer being conceivable except
by being set out in space, since they have now become identical, we
are necessarily led to the idea of a homogeneous time, the symbolical
image of real duration. In a word, our ego comes in contact with the
external world at its surface; our successive sensations, although
dissolving into one another, retain something of the mutual externality
which belongs to their objective causes; and thus our superficial
psychic life comes to be pictured without any great effort as set
out in a homogeneous medium. But the symbolical character of such a
picture becomes more striking as we advance further into the depths of
consciousness: the deep-seated self which ponders and decides, which
heats and blazes up, is a self whose states and changes permeate one
another and undergo a deep alteration as soon as we separate them from
one another in order to set them out in space. But as this deeper
self forms one and the same person with the superficial ego, the two
seem to _endure_ in the same way. And as the repeated picture of one
identical objective phenomenon, ever recurring, cuts up our superficial
psychic life into parts external to one another, the moments which
are thus determined determine in their turn distinct segments in
the dynamic and undivided progress of our more personal conscious
states. Thus the mutual externality which material objects gain from
their juxtaposition in homogeneous space reverberates and spreads
into the depths of consciousness: little by little our sensations are
distinguished from one another like the external causes which gave
rise to them, and our feelings or ideas come to be separated like the
sensations with which they are contemporaneous.

[Sidenote: Eliminate the superficial psychic states, and we no longer
perceive a homogeneous time or measure duration, but feel it as a
quality.]

That our ordinary conception of duration depends on a gradual incursion
of space into the domain of pure consciousness is proved by the fact
that, in order to deprive the ego of the faculty of perceiving a
homogeneous time, it is enough to take away from it this outer circle
of psychic states which it uses as a balance-wheel. These conditions
are realized when we dream; for sleep, by relaxing the play of the
organic functions, alters the communicating surface between the ego
and external objects. Here we no longer measure duration, but we
feel it; from quantity it returns to the state of quality; we no
longer estimate past time mathematically: the mathematical estimate
gives place to a confused instinct, capable, like all instincts, of
committing gross errors, but also of acting at times with extraordinary
skill. Even in the waking state, daily experience ought to teach us
to distinguish between duration as quality, that which consciousness
reaches immediately and which is probably what animals perceive, and
time so to speak materialized, time that has become quantity by being
set out in space. Whilst I am writing these lines, the hour strikes
on a neighbouring clock, but my inattentive ear does not perceive it
until several strokes have made themselves heard. Hence I have not
counted them; and yet I only have to turn my attention backwards to
count up the four strokes which have already sounded and add them to
those which I hear. If, then, I question myself carefully on what has
just taken place, I perceive that the first four sounds had struck
my ear and even affected my consciousness, but that the sensations
produced by each one of them, instead of being set side by side, had
melted into one another in such a way as to give the whole a peculiar
quality, to make a kind of musical phrase out of it. In order, then,
to estimate retrospectively the number of strokes sounded, I tried to
reconstruct this phrase in thought: my imagination made one stroke,
then two, then three, and as long as it did not reach the exact number
four, my feeling, when consulted, answered that the total effect was
qualitatively different. It had thus ascertained in its own way the
succession of four strokes, but quite otherwise than by a process
of addition, and without bringing in the image of a juxtaposition of
distinct terms. In a word, the number of strokes was perceived as a
quality and not as a quantity: it is thus that duration is presented to
immediate consciousness, and it retains this form so long as it does
not give place to a symbolical representation derived from extensity.

[Sidenote: There are therefore two forms of multiplicity, of duration
and conscious life.]

We should therefore distinguish two forms of multiplicity, two very
different ways of regarding duration, two aspects of conscious life.
Below homogeneous duration, which is the extensive symbol of true
duration, a close psychological analysis distinguishes a duration
whose heterogeneous moments permeate one another; below the numerical
multiplicity of conscious states, a qualitative multiplicity; below
the self with well-defined states, a self in which _succeeding each
other_ means _melting into one another_ and forming an organic whole.
But we are generally content with the first, i.e. with the shadow of
the self projected into homogeneous space. Consciousness, goaded by an
insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality,
or perceives the reality only through the symbol. As the self thus
refracted, and thereby broken to pieces, is much better adapted to the
requirements of social life in general and language in particular,
consciousness prefers it, and gradually loses sight of the fundamental
self.

[Sidenote: The two aspects of our conscious states.]

In order to recover this fundamental self, as the unsophisticated
consciousness would perceive it, a vigorous effort of analysis is
necessary, which will isolate the fluid inner states from their image,
first refracted, then solidified in homogeneous space. In other words,
our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas occur under two
aspects: the one clear and precise, but impersonal; the other confused,
ever changing, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold
of it without arresting its mobility or fit it into its common-place
forms without making it into public property. If we have been led to
distinguish two forms of multiplicity, two forms of duration, we must
expect each conscious state, taken by itself, to assume a different
aspect according as we consider it within a discrete multiplicity or a
confused multiplicity, in the time as quality, in which it is produced,
or in the time as quantity, into which it is projected.

[Sidenote: One of which is due to the solidifying influence of external
objects and language on our constantly changing feelings.]

When e.g. I take my first walk in a town in which I am going to live,
my environment produces on me two impressions at the same time, one
of which is destined to last while the other will constantly change.
Every day I perceive the same houses, and as I know that they are the
same objects, I always call them by the same name and I also fancy
that they always look the same to me. But if I recur, at the end of a
sufficiently long period, to the impression which I experienced during
the first few years, I am surprised at the remarkable, inexplicable,
and indeed inexpressible change which has taken place. It seems that
these objects, continually perceived by me and constantly impressing
themselves on my mind, have ended by borrowing from me something of my
own conscious existence; like myself they have lived, and like myself
they have grown old. This is not a mere illusion; for if to-day's
impression were absolutely identical with that of yesterday, what
difference would there be between perceiving and recognizing, between
learning and remembering? Yet this difference escapes the attention of
most of us; we shall hardly perceive it, unless we are warned of it and
then carefully look into ourselves. The reason is that our outer and,
so to speak, social life is more practically important to us than our
inner and individual existence. We instinctively tend to solidify our
impressions in order to express them in language. Hence we confuse the
feeling itself, which is in a perpetual state of becoming, with its
permanent external object, and especially with the word which expresses
this object. In the same way as the fleeting duration of our ego is
fixed by its projection in homogeneous space, our constantly changing
impressions, wrapping themselves round the external object which is
their cause, take on its definite outlines and its immobility.

[Sidenote: How language gives a fixed form to fleeting sensations.]

Our simple sensations, taken in their natural state, are still more
fleeting. Such and such a flavour, such and such a scent, pleased me
when I was a child though I dislike them to-day. Yet I still give the
same name to the sensation experienced, and I speak as if only my
taste had changed, whilst the scent and the flavour have remained the
same. Thus I again solidify the sensation; and when its changeableness
becomes so obvious that I cannot help recognizing it, I abstract
this changeableness to give it a name of its own and solidify it in
the shape of a _taste._ But in reality there are neither identical
sensations nor multiple tastes: for sensations and tastes seem to me
to be _objects_ as soon as I isolate and name them, and in the human
soul there are only _processes._ What I ought to say is that every
sensation is altered by repetition, and that if it does not seem to
me to change from day to day, it is because I perceive it through the
object which is its cause, through the word which translates it. This
influence of language on sensation is deeper than is usually thought.
Not only does language make us believe in the unchangeableness of our
sensations, but it will sometimes deceive us as to the nature of the
sensation felt. Thus, when I partake of a dish that is supposed to be
exquisite, the name which it bears, suggestive of the approval given to
it, comes between my sensation and my consciousness; I may believe that
the flavour pleases me when a slight effort of attention would prove
the contrary, In short, the word with well-defined outlines, the rough
and ready word, which stores up the stable, common, and consequently
impersonal element in the impressions of mankind, overwhelms or
at least covers over the delicate and fugitive impressions of our
individual consciousness. To maintain the struggle on equal terms,
the latter ought to express themselves in precise words; but these
words, as soon as they were formed, would turn against the sensation
which gave birth to them, and, invented to show that the sensation is
unstable, they would impose on it their own stability.

[Sidenote: How analysis and description distort the feelings.]

This overwhelming of the immediate consciousness is nowhere so striking
as in the case of our feelings. A violent love or a deep melancholy
takes possession of our SOUL: here we feel a thousand different
elements which dissolve into and permeate one another without any
precise outlines, without the least tendency to externalize themselves
in relation to one another; hence their originality. We distort them
as soon as we distinguish a numerical multiplicity in their confused
mass: what will it be, then, when we set them out, isolated from one
another, in this homogeneous medium which may be called either time or
space, whichever you prefer? A moment ago each of them was borrowing an
indefinable colour from its surroundings: now we have it colourless,
and ready to accept a name. The feeling itself is a being which
lives and develops and is therefore constantly changing; otherwise
how could it gradually lead us to form a resolution? Our resolution
would be immediately taken. But it lives because the duration in
which it develops is a duration whose moments permeate one another.
By separating these moments from each other, by spreading out time in
space, we have caused this feeling to lose its life and its colour.
Hence, we are now standing before our own shadow: we believe that
we have analysed our feeling, while we have really replaced it by a
juxtaposition of lifeless states which can be translated into words,
and each of which constitutes the common element, the impersonal
residue, of the impressions felt in a given case by the whole of
society. And this is why we reason about these states and apply our
simple logic to them: having set them up as genera by the mere fact
of having isolated them from one another, we have prepared them for
use in some future deduction. Now, if some bold novelist, tearing
aside the cleverly woven curtain of our conventional ego, shows us
under this appearance of logic a fundamental absurdity, under this
juxtaposition of simple states an infinite permeation of a thousand
different impressions which have already ceased to exist the instant
they are named, we commend him for having known us better than we
knew ourselves. This is not the case, however, and the very fact that
he spreads out our feeling in a homogeneous time, and expresses its
elements by words, shows that he in his turn is only offering us its
shadow: but he has arranged this shadow in such a way as to make us
suspect the extraordinary and illogical nature of the object which
projects it; he has made us reflect by giving outward expression to
something of that contradiction, that interpenetration, which is the
very essence of the elements expressed. Encouraged by him, we have
put aside for an instant the veil which we interposed between our
consciousness and ourselves. He has brought us back into our own
presence.

[Sidenote: On the surface our conscious states obey the laws of
association. Deeper down they interpenetrate and form a part of
ourselves.]

We should experience the same sort of surprise if we strove to seize
our ideas themselves in their natural state, as our consciousness would
perceive them if it were no longer beset by space. This breaking up
of the constituent elements of an idea, which issues in abstraction,
is too convenient for us to do without it in ordinary life and even
in philosophical discussion. But when we fancy that the parts thus
artificially separated are the genuine threads with which the concrete
idea was woven, when, substituting for the interpenetration of the real
terms the juxtaposition of their symbols, we claim to make duration
out of space, we unavoidably fall into the mistakes of associationism.
We shall not insist on the latter point, which will be the subject of
a thorough examination in the next chapter. Let it be enough to say
that the impulsive zeal with which we take sides on certain questions
shows how our intellect has its instincts--and what can an instinct
of this kind be if not an impetus common to all our ideas, i.e. their
very interpenetration? The beliefs to which we most strongly adhere are
those of which we should find it most difficult to give an account, and
the reasons by which we justify them are seldom those which have led
us to adopt them. In a certain sense we have adopted them without any
reason, for what makes them valuable in our eyes is that they match the
colour of all our other ideas, and that from the very first we have
seen in them something of ourselves. Hence they do not take in our
minds that common looking form which they will assume as soon as we try
to give expression to them in words; and, although they bear the same
name in other minds, they are by no means the same thing. The fact is
that each of them has the same kind of life as a cell in an organism:
everything which affects the general state of the self affects it also.
But while the cell occupies a definite point in the organism, an idea
which is truly ours fills the whole of our self. Not all our ideas,
however, are thus incorporated in the fluid mass of our conscious
states. Many float on the surface, like dead leaves on the water of a
pond: the mind, when it thinks them over and over again, finds them
ever the same, as if they were external to it. Among these are the
ideas which we receive ready made, and which remain in us without ever
being properly assimilated, or again the ideas which we have omitted
to cherish and which have withered in neglect. If, in proportion as we
get away from the deeper strata of the self, our conscious states tend
more and more to assume the form of a numerical multiplicity, and to
spread out in a homogeneous space, it is just because these conscious
states tend to become more and more lifeless, more and more impersonal.
Hence we need not be surprised if only those ideas which least belong
to us can be adequately expressed in words: only to these, as we shall
see, does the associationist theory apply. External to one another,
they keep up relations among themselves in which the inmost nature
of each of them counts for nothing, relations which can therefore be
classified. It may thus be said that they are associated by contiguity
or for some logical reason. But if, digging below the surface of
contact between the self and external objects, we penetrate into the
depths of the organized and living intelligence, we shall witness the
joining together or rather the blending of many ideas which, when once
dissociated, seem to exclude one another as logically contradictory
terms. The strangest dreams, in which two images overlie one another
and show us at the same time two different persons, who yet make only
one, will hardly give us an idea of the interweaving of concepts which
goes on when we are awake. The imagination of the dreamer, cut off from
the external world, imitates with mere images, and parodies in its own
way, the process which constantly goes on with regard to ideas in the
deeper regions of the intellectual life.


[Sidenote: By separating our conscious states we promote social life,
but raise problems soluble only by recourse to the concrete and living
self.]

Thus may be verified, thus, too, will be illustrated by a further
study of deep-seated psychic phenomena the principle from which we
started: conscious life displays two aspects according as we perceive
it directly or by refraction through space. Considered in themselves,
the deep-seated conscious states have no relation to quantity, they
are pure quality; they intermingle in such a way that we cannot tell
whether they are one or several, nor even examine them from this
point of view without at once altering their nature. The duration
which they thus create is a duration whose moments do not constitute
a numerical multiplicity: to characterize these moments by saying
that they encroach on one another would still be to distinguish them.
If each of us lived a purely individual life, if there were neither
society nor language, would our consciousness grasp the series of inner
states in this unbroken form? Undoubtedly it would not quite succeed,
because we should still retain the idea of a homogeneous space in
which objects are sharply distinguished from one another, and because
it is too convenient to set out in such a medium the somewhat cloudy
states which first attract the attention of consciousness, in order
to resolve them into simpler terms. But mark that the intuition of
a homogeneous space is already a step towards social life. Probably
animals do not picture to themselves, beside their sensations, as we
do, an external world quite distinct from themselves, which is the
common property of all conscious beings. Our tendency to form a clear
picture of this externality of things and the homogeneity of their
medium is the same as the impulse which leads us to live in common
and to speak. But, in proportion as the conditions of social life are
more completely realized, the current which carries our conscious
states from within outwards is strengthened; little by little these
states are made into objects or things; they break off not only from
one another, but from ourselves. Henceforth we no longer perceive them
except in the homogeneous medium in which we have set their image,
and through the word which lends them its common-place colour. Thus a
second self is formed which obscures the first, a self whose existence
is made up of distinct moments, whose states are separated from one
another and easily expressed in words. I do not mean, here, to split
up the personality, nor to bring back in another form the numerical
multiplicity which I shut out at the beginning. It is the same self
which perceives distinct states at first, and which, by afterwards
concentrating its attention, will see these states melt into one
another like the crystals of a snow-flake when touched for some time
with the finger. And, in truth, for the sake of language, the self has
everything to gain by not bringing back confusion where order reigns,
and in not upsetting this ingenious arrangement of almost impersonal
states by which it has ceased to form "a kingdom within a kingdom."
An inner life with well distinguished moments and with clearly
characterized states will answer better the requirements of social
life. Indeed, a superficial psychology may be content with describing
it without thereby falling into error, on condition, however, that
it restricts itself to the study of what has taken place and leaves
out what is going on. But if, passing from statics to dynamics, this
psychology claims to reason about things in the making as it reasoned
about things made, if it offers us the concrete and living self as an
association of terms which are distinct from one another and are set
side by side in a homogeneous medium, it will see difficulty after
difficulty rising in its path. And these difficulties will multiply
the greater the efforts it makes to overcome them, for all its efforts
will only bring into clearer light the absurdity of the fundamental
hypothesis by which it spreads out time in space and 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.


[1] I had already completed the present work when I read in the
_Critique philosophique_(for 1883 and 1884) F. Pillon's very remarkable
refutation of an interesting article by G. Noël on the interconnexion
of the notions of number and space. But I have not found it necessary
to make any alterations in the following pages, seeing that Pillon does
not distinguish between time as quality and time as quantity, between
the multiplicity of juxtaposition and that of interpenetration. Without
this vital distinction, which it is the chief aim of the present
chapter to establish, it would be possible to maintain, with Pillon,
that number may be built up from the relation of co-existence. But what
is here meant by co-existence? If the co-existing terms form an organic
whole, they will never lead us to the notion of number; if they remain
distinct, they are in juxtaposition and we are dealing with space. It
is no use to quote the example of simultaneous impressions received
by several senses. We either leave these sensations their specific
differences, which amounts to saying that we do not count them; or else
we eliminate their differences, and then how are we to distinguish
them if not by their position or that of their symbols? We shall see
that the verb "to distinguish" has two meanings, the one qualitative,
the other quantitative: these two meanings have been confused, in my
opinion, by the philosophers who have dealt with the relations between
number and space.

[2] Évellin, _Infini et quantité._ Paris, 1881.




CHAPTER III


THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES

FREE WILL



[Sidenote: Mechanism, dynamism and 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. Dynamism
starts from the idea of voluntary activity, given by consciousness,
and comes to represent inertia by gradually emptying 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.

[Sidenote: For dynamism facts more real than laws: mechanism reverses
this attitude. This idea of spontaneity simpler than that of inertia.]

A thorough examination of these two conceptions of nature will show
that they involve two very different hypotheses as to the relations
between laws and the facts which they govern. As he looks higher and
higher, the believer in dynamism thinks that he perceives facts which
more and more elude the grasp of laws: he thus 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, discovers within the
particular fact a certain number of laws of which the fact is thus made
to be the meeting point, and nothing else: on this hypothesis 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 dynamism 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 calculated: 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 mechanism 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 produced by
the interference of two lights. Regarded 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 is self-sufficient. For each of us has the
immediate 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.

[Sidenote: Determinism: (1) physical (2) psychological. Former
reducible to latter, which itself rests on inaccurate conception of
multiplicity of conscious states or duration.]

_A posteriori,_ however, definite facts are appealed to against
freedom, some physical, others psychological. Sometimes it is asserted
that our actions are necessitated by our feelings, our ideas, and the
whole preceding series of our conscious states; sometimes freedom
is denounced as being incompatible with the fundamental properties
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 that psychological determinism itself, and the
refutations which are given of it, rest on an inaccurate 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 activity cannot be compared to that of
any other force.


[Sidenote: Physical determinism stated in the language of the molecular
theory of matter.]

Physical determinism, in its latest form, is closely bound up with
mechanical or rather kinetic theories of matter. The universe is
pictured as a heap of matter which the imagination resolves into
molecules and 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 moment will
be modified by the shocks which the nervous system receives from the
surrounding 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 resultant 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
phenomenon.[1]

[Sidenote: If principle of conservation of energy is universal,
physiological and nervous phenomena are necessitated, but perhaps not
conscious states.]

We shall not raise any difficulty about recognizing that this
conception of physiological phenomena in general, and nervous
phenomena in particular, is a very natural deduction from the law of
the conservation of energy. Certainly, the atomic theory of matter is
still at the hypothetical stage, and the purely kinetic explanations
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 conservation 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
of energy cannot be admitted except in virtue of some psychological
hypothesis.

Sidenote: To prove conscious states determined, we should have to show
a necessary connexion between them and cerebral states. No such proof.

Even if we assumed that the position, the direction and the velocity of
each atom of cerebral matter are determined at every moment of time, it
would not at all follow that our psychic life is subject to the same
necessity. For we should first have to prove that a strictly determined
psychic state 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 obviously bound up with certain
determining conditions, 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 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 correspondence between states of consciousness
and modes of extension. Leibniz ascribed it to a preestablished
harmony, and would never have admitted that a motion could give rise
to a perception 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, whatever 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 molecular
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.

[Sidenote: Physical determinism, when assumed to be universal,
postulates psychological determinism.]

Consciousness indeed informs us that the majority of our actions can
be explained by motives. But it does not appear that determination
here means necessity, since common sense believes in free will. The
determinist, however, led astray by a conception of duration and
causality which we shall criticise a little later, holds that the
determination 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 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 circumstances 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 performed 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.

[Sidenote: Is the principle of conservation of energy universal valid?]

But we must own that the amount of freedom which is left to us after
strictly complying with the principle of the conservation of energy is
rather limited. For, even if this law does not exert a necessitating
influence over the course of our ideas, it will at least determine our
movements. Our inner life will 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 conservation
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.

[Sidenote: It implies that a system can return to its original state.
Neglects duration, hence inapplicable to living beings and conscious
states.]

We must not overrate the part played by the principle of the
conservation of energy in the history of the natural sciences. In its
present form it marks a certain phase in the evolution of certain
sciences; but it has not been the governing factor in this evolution
and we should be wrong in 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 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 positive
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 experience 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 calculations. 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 phenomena 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 necessary 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 movement can create sensation out of a zero of consciousness,
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, though vague, belief of mankind in the
conservation 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 conscious
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 being the case,
is there not much to be said for the hypothesis of a conscious force
or free will, which, subject to the action of time and storing up
duration, may thereby escape the law of the conservation of energy?

[Sidenote: The idea of the universality of conservation depends on
confusion between concrete duration and abstract time.]

In truth, it is not a wish to meet the requirements of positive
science, but rather a psychological mistake which has caused this
abstract principle of mechanics to be set up as a universal law. As
we are not accustomed to observe ourselves directly, but perceive
ourselves through forms borrowed from the external world, we are led
to believe that real duration, the duration lived by consciousness,
is the same as the duration which glides over the inert atoms without
penetrating and altering them. Hence it is that we do not see any
absurdity in putting things back in their place after a lapse of time,
in supposing the same motives acting afresh on the same persons, and
in concluding that these causes would again produce the same effect.
That such an hypothesis has no real meaning is what we shall prove
later on. For the present let us simply show that, if once we enter
upon this path, we are of course led to set up the principle of the
conservation of energy as a universal law. For we have thereby got
rid of just that difference between the outer and the inner world
which a close examination shows to be the main one: we have identified
true duration with apparent duration. After this it would be absurd
to consider time, even _our_ time, as a cause of gain or loss, as a
concrete reality, or a force in its own way. Thus, while we ought only
to say (if we kept aloof from all presuppositions concerning free will)
that the law of the conservation of energy governs physical phenomena
and _may,_ one day, be extended to all phenomena if psychological facts
also prove favourable to it, we go far beyond this, and, under the
influence of a metaphysical prepossession, we lay down the principle of
the conservation of energy as a law which _should_ govern all phenomena
whatever, or must be supposed to do so until psychological facts have
actually spoken against it. Science, properly so called, has therefore
nothing to do with all this. We are simply confronted with a confusion
between concrete duration and abstract time, two very different things.
In a word, the so-called physical determinism is reducible at bottom
to a psychological determinism, and it is this latter doctrine, as we
hinted at first, that we have to examine.


[Sidenote: Psychological determinism depends on associationist
conception of mind.]

Psychological determinism, in its latest and most precise shape,
implies an associationist conception of mind. The existing state of
consciousness is first thought of as necessitated by the preceding
states, but it is soon realized that this cannot be a geometrical
necessity, such as that which connects a resultant, for example, with
its components. For between successive conscious states there exists
a difference of quality which will always frustrate any attempt to
deduce any one of them _a priori_ from its predecessors. So experience
is appealed to, with the object of showing that the transition from
one psychic state to another can always be explained by some simple
reason, the second obeying as it were the call of the first. Experience
really does show this: and, as for ourselves, we shall willingly admit
that there always is some relation between the existing state of
consciousness and any new state to which consciousness passes. But is
this relation, which explains the transition, the cause of it?

[Sidenote: The series of associations may be merely an ex post facto
attempt to account for a new idea.]

May we here give an account of what we have personally observed? In
resuming a conversation which had been interrupted for a few moments
we have happened to notice that both we ourselves and our friend were
thinking of some new object at the same time.--The reason is, it
will be said, that each has followed up for his own part the natural
development of the idea at which the conversation had stopped: the
same series of associations has been formed on both sides.--No doubt
this interpretation holds good in a fairly large number of cases;
careful inquiry, however, has led us to an unexpected result. It is a
fact that the two speakers do connect the new subject of conversation
with the former one: they will even point out the intervening ideas;
but, curiously enough, they will not always connect the new idea,
which they have both reached, with the same point of the preceding
conversation, and the two series of intervening associations may be
quite different. What are we to conclude from this, if not that this
common idea is due to an unknown cause--perhaps to some physical
influence--and that, in order to justify its emergence, it has called
forth a series of antecedents which explain it and which seem to be its
cause, but are really its effect?

[Sidenote: Illustration from hypnotic suggestion.]

When a patient carries out at the appointed time the suggestion
received in the hypnotic state, the act which he performs is brought
about, according to him, by the preceding series of his conscious
states. Yet these states are really effects, and not causes: it was
necessary that the act should take place; it was also necessary that
the patient should explain it to himself; and it is the future act
which determined, by a kind of attraction, the whole series of psychic
states of which it is to be the natural consequence. The determinists
will seize on this argument: it proves as a matter of fact that we are
sometimes irresistibly subject to another's will. But does it not also
show us how our own will is capable of willing for willing's sake, and
of then leaving the act which has been performed to be explained by
antecedents of which it has really been the cause?

[Sidenote: Illustration from deliberation.]

If we question ourselves carefully, we shall see that we sometimes
weigh motives and deliberate over them, when our mind is already
made up. An inner voice, hardly perceivable, whispers: "Why this
deliberation? You know the result and you are quite certain of what
you are going to do." But no matter! it seems that we make a point
of safe-guarding the principle of mechanism and of conforming to the
laws of the association of ideas. The abrupt intervention of the will
is a kind of _coup d'état_ which our mind foresees and which it tries
to legitimate beforehand by a formal deliberation. True, it could be
asked whether the will, even when it wills for willing's sake, does
not obey some decisive reason, and whether willing for willing's sake
is free willing. We shall not insist on this point for the moment.
It will be enough for us to have shown that, even when adopting the
point of view of associationism, it is difficult to maintain that an
act is absolutely determined by its motive and our conscious states
by one another. Beneath these deceptive appearances a more attentive
psychology sometimes reveals to us effects which precede their causes,
and phenomena of psychic attraction which elude the known laws of the
association of ideas. But the time has come to ask whether the very
point of view which associationism adopts does not involve a defective
conception of the self and of the multiplicity of conscious states.

[Sidenote: Associationism involves a defective conception of the self.]

Associationist determinism represents the self as a collection
of psychic states, the strongest of which exerts a prevailing
influence and carries the others with it. This doctrine thus sharply
distinguishes co-existing psychic phenomena from one another. "I could
have abstained from murder," says Stuart Mill, "if my aversion to
the crime and my dread of its consequences had been weaker than the
temptation which impelled me to commit it."[2] And a little further
on: "His desire to do right and his aversion to doing wrong are
strong enough to overcome ... any other desire or aversion which may
conflict with them."[3] Thus desire, aversion, fear, temptation are
here presented as distinct things which there is no inconvenience in
naming separately. Even when he connects these states with the self
which experiences them, the English philosopher still insists on
setting up clear-cut distinctions: "The conflict is between me and
myself; between (for instance) me desiring a pleasure and me dreading
self-reproach."[4] Bain, for his part, devotes a whole chapter to the
"Conflict of Motives."[5] In it he balances pleasures and pains as so
many terms to which one might attribute, at least by abstraction, an
existence of their own. Note that the opponents of determinism agree
to follow it into this field. They too speak of associations of ideas
and conflicts of motives, and one of the ablest of these philosophers,
Alfred Fouillée, goes so far as to make the idea of freedom itself a
motive capable of counterbalancing others.[6] Here, however, lies the
danger. Both parties commit themselves to a confusion which arises from
language, and which is due to the fact that language is not meant to
convey all the delicate shades of inner states.

[Sidenote: This erroneous tendency aided by language. Illustration.]

I rise, for example, to open the window, and I have hardly stood up
before I forget what I had to do.--All right, it will be said; you
have associated two ideas, that of an end to be attained and that of a
movement to be accomplished: one of the ideas has vanished and only the
idea of the movement remains.--However, I do not sit down again; I have
a confused feeling that something remains to be done. This particular
standing still, therefore, is not the same as any other standing still;
in the position which I take up the act to be performed is as it were
prefigured, so that I have only to keep this position, to study it,
or rather to feel it intimately, in order to recover the idea which
had vanished for a moment. Hence, this idea must have tinged with a
certain particular colouring the mental image of the intended movement
and the position taken up, and this colouring, without doubt, would
not have been the same if the end to be attained had been different.
Nevertheless language would have still expressed the movement and the
position in the same way; and associationism would have distinguished
the two cases by saying that with the idea of the same movement there
was associated this time the idea of a new end: as if the mere newness
of the end to be attained did not alter in some degree the idea of the
movement to be performed, even though the movement itself remained the
same! We should thus say, not that the image of a certain position
can be connected in consciousness with images of different ends to be
attained, but rather that positions geometrically identical outside
look different to consciousness from the inside, according to the end
contemplated. The mistake of associationism is that it first did away
with the qualitative element in the act to be performed and retained
only the geometrical and impersonal element: with the idea of this
act, thus rendered colourless, it was then necessary to associate
some specific difference to distinguish it from many other acts. But
this association is the work of the associationist philosopher who is
studying my mind, rather than of my mind itself.

[Sidenote: Illustration from "associations" of smell.]

I smell a rose and immediately confused recollections of childhood come
back to my memory. In truth, these recollections have not been called
up by the perfume of the rose: I breathe them in with the very scent;
it means all that to me. To others it will smell differently.--It is
always the same scent, you will say, but associated with different
ideas.--I am quite willing that you should express yourself in this
way; but do not forget that you have first removed the personal
element from the different impressions which the rose makes on each
one of us; you have retained only the objective aspect, that part of
the scent of the rose which is public property and thereby belongs
to space. Only thus was it possible to give a name to the rose and
its perfume. You then found it necessary, in order to distinguish our
personal impressions from one another, to add specific characteristics
to the general idea of rose-scent. And you now say that our different
impressions, our personal impressions, result from the fact that we
associate different recollections with rose-scent. But the association
of which you speak hardly exists except for you, and as a method of
explanation. It is in this way that, by setting side by side certain
letters of an alphabet common to a number of known languages, we may
imitate fairly well such and such a characteristic sound belonging to a
new one; but not with any of these letters, nor with all of them, has
the sound itself been built up.

[Sidenote: Associationism fails to distinguish between the multiplicity
of juxtaposition and that of fusion.]

We are thus brought back to the distinction which we set up above
between the multiplicity of juxtaposition and that of fusion or
interpenetration. Such and such a feeling such and such an idea,
contains an indefinite plurality of conscious states: but the plurality
will not be observed unless it is, as it were, spread out in this
homogeneous medium which some call duration, but which is in reality
space. We shall then perceive terms external to one another, and these
terms will no longer be the states of consciousness themselves, but
their symbols, or, speaking more exactly, the words which express
them. There is, as we have pointed out, a close connexion between the
faculty of conceiving a homogeneous medium, such as space, and that
of thinking by means of general ideas. As soon as we try to give an
account of a conscious state, to analyse it, this state, which is above
all personal, will be resolved into impersonal elements external to one
another, each of which calls up the idea of a genus and is expressed
by a word. But because our reason, equipped with the idea of space
and the power of creating symbols, draws these multiple elements out
of the whole, it does not follow that they were contained in it. For
within the whole they did not occupy space and did not care to express
themselves by means of symbols; they permeated and melted into one
another. Associationism thus makes the mistake of constantly replacing
the concrete phenomenon which takes place in the mind by the artificial
reconstruction of it given by philosophy, and of thus confusing the
explanation of the fact with the fact itself. We shall perceive this
more clearly as we consider deeper and more comprehensive psychic
states.

[Sidenote: Failure of associationism to explain the deeper states of
the self.]

The self comes into contact with the external world at its surface;
and as this surface retains the imprint of objects, the self will
associate by contiguity terms which it has perceived in juxtaposition:
it is connexions of this kind, connexions of quite simple and so to
speak impersonal sensations, that the associationist theory fits. But,
just in proportion as we dig below the surface and get down to the real
self, do its states of consciousness cease to stand in juxtaposition
and begin to permeate and melt into one another, and each to be tinged
with the colouring of all the others. Thus each of us has his own way
of loving and hating; and this love or this hatred reflects his whole
personality. Language, however, denotes these states by the same words
in every case: so that it has been able to fix only the objective and
impersonal aspect of love, hate, and the thousand emotions which stir
the soul. We estimate the talent of a novelist by the power with which
he lifts out of the common domain, to which language had thus brought
them down, feelings and ideas to which he strives to restore, by adding
detail to detail, their original and living individuality. But just as
we can go on inserting points between two positions of a moving body
without ever filling up the space traversed, in the same way, by the
mere fact that we associate states with states and that these states
are set side by side instead of permeating one another, we fail to
translate completely what our soul experiences: there is no common
measure between mind and language.

[Sidenote: The self is not an aggregate of conscious states. Freedom
is self-expression, admitting of degrees, and may be curtailed by
education.]

Therefore, it is only an inaccurate psychology, misled by language,
which will show us the soul determined by sympathy, aversion, or hate
as though by so many forces pressing upon it. These feelings, provided
that they go deep enough, each make up the whole soul, since the whole
content of the soul is reflected in each of them. To say that the soul
is determined under the influence of any one of these feelings is thus
to recognize that it is self-determined. The associationist reduces the
self to an aggregate of conscious states: sensations, feelings, and
ideas. But if he sees in these various states no more than is expressed
in their name, if he retains only their impersonal aspect, he may set
them side by side for ever without getting anything but a phantom
self, the shadow of the ego projecting itself into space. If, on the
contrary, he takes these psychic states with the particular colouring
which they assume in the case of a definite person, and which comes
to each of them by reflection from all the others, then there is no
need to associate a number of conscious states in order to rebuild the
person, for the whole personality is in a single one of them, provided
that we know how to choose it. And the outward manifestation of this
inner state will be just what is called a free act, since the self
alone will have been the author of it, and since it will express the
whole of the self. Freedom, thus understood, is not _absolute,_ as a
radically libertarian philosophy would have it; it admits of degrees.
For it is by no means the case that all conscious states blend with
one another as raindrops with the water of a lake. The self, in so
far as it has to do with a homogeneous space, develops on a kind of
surface, and on this surface independent growths may form and float.
Thus a suggestion received in the hypnotic state is not incorporated in
the mass of conscious states, but, endowed with a life of its own, it
will usurp the whole personality when its time comes. A violent anger
roused by some accidental circumstance, an hereditary vice suddenly
emerging from the obscure depths of the organism to the surface of
consciousness, will act almost like a hypnotic suggestion. Alongside
these independent elements there may be found more complex series,
the terms of which do permeate one another, but which never succeed
in blending perfectly with the whole mass of the self. Such is the
system of feelings and ideas which are the result of an education not
properly assimilated, an education which appeals to the memory rather
than to the judgment. Here will be found, within the fundamental self,
a parasitic self which continually encroaches upon the other. Many
live this kind of life, and die without having known true freedom.
But suggestion would become persuasion if the entire self assimilated
it; passion, even sudden passion, would no longer bear the stamp of
fatality if the whole history of the person were reflected in it, as
in the indignation of Alceste;[7] and the most authoritative education
would not curtail any of our freedom if it only imparted to us ideas
and feelings capable of impregnating the whole soul. It is the whole
soul, in fact, which gives rise to the free decision: and the act will
be so much the freer the more the dynamic series with which it is
connected tends to be the fundamental self.

[Sidenote: Our every-day acts obey the laws of association. At
great great crises our decisions are really free as expressing the
fundamental self.]

Thus understood, free acts are exceptional, even on the part of those
who are most given to controlling and reasoning out what they do.
It has been pointed out that we generally perceive our own self by
refraction through space, that our conscious states crystallize into
words, and that our living and concrete self thus gets covered with
an outer crust of clean-cut psychic states, which are separated from
one another and consequently fixed. We added that, for the convenience
of language and the promotion of social relations, we have everything
to gain by not breaking through this crust and by assuming it to
give an exact outline of the form of the object which it covers. It
should now be added that our daily actions are called forth not so
much by our feelings themselves, which are constantly changing, as
by the unchanging images with which these feelings are bound up. In
the morning, when the hour strikes at which I am accustomed to rise,
I might receive this impression σὺν ὄλῃ τῇ ψυχῆ, as Plato says; I
might let it blend with the confused mass of impressions which fill
my mind; perhaps in that case it would not determine me to act. But
generally this impression, instead of disturbing my whole consciousness
like a stone which falls into the water of a pond, merely stirs up
an idea which is, so to speak, solidified on the surface, the idea
of rising and attending to my usual occupations. This impression and
this idea have in the end become tied up with one another, so that the
act follows the impression without the self interfering with it. In
this instance I am a conscious automaton, and I am so because I have
everything to gain by being so. It will be found that the majority
of our daily actions are performed in this way and that, owing to
the solidification in memory of such and such sensations, feelings,
or ideas, impressions from the outside call forth movements on our
part which, though conscious and even intelligent, have many points
of resemblance with reflex acts. It is to these acts, which are very
numerous but for the most part insignificant, that the associationist
theory is applicable. They are, taken all together, the substratum
of our free activity, and with respect to this activity they play
the same part as our organic functions in relation to the 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 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
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 choose in defiance of what is conventionally called
a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason is the more striking
the deeper our freedom goes.

[Sidenote: Determinism sets on the one side the ego, always
self-identical and on the other contrary feelings. But this is mere
symbolism.]

But the determinist, even when he refrains from regarding the more
serious emotions or deep-seated psychic states as forces, nevertheless
distinguishes them from one another and is thus led to a mechanical
conception of the self. He will show us this self hesitating between
two contrary feelings, passing from one to the other and finally
deciding in favour of one of them. The self and the feelings which stir
it are thus treated as well 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 evolution to a
free act. But determinism, ever craving for symbolical representation,
cannot help substituting 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 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 consciousness, which shows us inner dynamism as a fact.

[Sidenote: Freedom and character. The determinist next asks, could your
act have been different or can it be foretold?]

In short, we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality,
when they express it, when that indefinable resemblance to it which
one sometimes finds between the artist and his work. It is no use
asserting that we are then yielding to the all-powerful influence of
our character. 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 in 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
objection. Certainly our character is altering imperceptibly 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. In a
word, if it is agreed to call every act free which springs from the
self and from the self alone, the act which bears the mark of our
personality is truly free, for our self alone will lay claim to its
paternity. 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 position, takes refuge in the
past or the future. Sometimes he transfers himself in thought to some
earlier period and asserts the necessary determination, 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
willingly 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.

[Sidenote: Determinist and libertarian doctrines of possible acts.]

"To be conscious of free will," says Stuart Mill, "must mean to be
conscious, before I have decided, that I am able to decide either
way.[8] This is really the way in which 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 testimony 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 ourselves
hypothetically," Stuart Mill goes on, "as having acted otherwise
than we did, we always suppose a difference in the antecedents. We
picture ourselves as having known something that we did not know,
or not known something that we did know."[9] And, faithful to his
principle, the English philosopher assigns consciousness the rôle 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 the former implies that
there is only one 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.


[Sidenote: Geometrical (and thereby deceptive) representation of the
process of coming to a decision.]

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 states,
and that these states can be divided into two groups according as I
incline more towards X or in the contrary direction. Indeed, these
opposite inclinations 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 successive
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 decision?
Hence there are not exactly two contrary states, but a large number
of successive and different states within which I distinguish, by an
effort of imagination, two opposite directions.

[Illustration]

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
directions which our imagination ascribes to them for the greater
convenience of language. It will also be understood that these
are symbolical representations, that in reality there are not two
tendencies, or even two directions, but a self which lives and develops
by means of its very hesitations, until the free action drops from it
like an over-ripe fruit.

[Sidenote: The only reality is the living developing self, in which we
distinguish by abstraction two opposite tendencies or directions.]

But this conception of voluntary activity does not satisfy common
sense, because, being essentially a devotee of mechanism, it loves
clear-cut distinctions, those which are expressed by sharply defined
words or by different positions in space. Hence 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 O 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 distinguished, by abstraction only,
two opposite directions, is replaced by these directions themselves,
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 hypothesis, 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 development, 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 issues naturally and logically in the most
unbending determinism.

[Sidenote: If this symbolism represents the facts, the activity of the
self has always tended in one direction, and determinism results.]

The living activity of the self, in which we distinguish by abstraction
two opposite tendencies, will finally issue either at X or Y. Now,
since it is agreed to localize the double activity of the self at the
point O, there is no reason to separate this activity from the act
in which it will 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 O 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 between 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 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 absolute necessity.

[Sidenote: Libertarians ignore the fact that one path has been chosen,
and not the other.]

In short, defenders and opponents of free will agree in holding that
the action is preceded by a kind of mechanical oscillation between two
points X and Y. If I decide in favour of X, the former will tell me:
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 performed, 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 represent the
progress of the activity of the self, they bring back the self to the
point O to oscillate there until further orders.

[Sidenote: But the figure merely gives the stereotyped memory of the
process, and not the dynamic progress which issued in the set.]

It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the figure, which is really
a splitting of our psychic activity in space, is purely symbolical,
and as such, cannot be constructed unless we adopt the hypothesis
that our deliberation is finished and our mind made up. If you trace
it beforehand, act 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
possibility 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, recapitulating the terms of the series, we perceive succession
under the form of simultaneity, we project time into space, and we
base our reasoning, consciously 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 imagination 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 encounter
insuperable difficulties from the very beginning: if the two courses
were equally possible, how have 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?

[Sidenote: Fundamental error is confusion of time and space. The self
infallible in affirming immediate experience of freedom, but cannot
explain it.]

If I glance over a road marked on the map and follow it up to a
certain point, there is nothing to prevent my turning back and trying
to find out whether it branches off anywhere. But time is not a line
along which one can pass again. Certainly, once it has elapsed, we
are justified in picturing the successive moments as external to one
another and in thus thinking 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 direction 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 see 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 of freedom remains after this
discussion exactly where it was to begin with; nor must we be surprised
at it, since freedom must be sought in a certain shade or quality of
the action itself and not in the relation of this act to what it is
not or to what it might have been. All the difficulty arises from the
fact that both parties picture the deliberation under the form of an
oscillation in space, while it really consists in a dynamic progress
in which the self and its motives, like real living beings, are in a
constant state of becoming. The self, infallible when it affirms its
immediate experiences, feels itself free and says so; but, as soon
as it tries to explain its freedom to itself, it no longer perceives
itself except by a kind of refraction through space. Hence a symbolism
of a mechanical kind, equally incapable of proving, disproving, or
illustrating free will.


[Sidenote: Is prediction of an act possible? Probable and infallible
conclusions.]

But determinism will not admit itself beaten, and, putting the question
in a new form, it will say: "Let us leave aside actions already
performed: let us consider only actions that are to come. The question
is whether, knowing from now onwards all the future antecedents,
some higher intelligence would not be able to predict with absolute
certainty the decision which will result."--We gladly agree to the
question being put in these terms: it will give us a chance of stating
our own theory with greater precision. But we shall first draw a
distinction between those who think that the knowledge of antecedents
would enable us to state a _probable_ conclusion and those who speak of
an _infallible_ foresight. To say that a certain friend, under certain
circumstances, will very probably act in a certain way, is not so much
to predict the future conduct of our friend as to pass a judgment
on his present character, that is to say, on his past. Although our
feelings, our ideas, our character, are constantly altering, a sudden
change is seldom observed; and it is still more seldom that we cannot
say of a person whom we know that certain actions seem to accord
fairly well with his nature and that certain others are absolutely
inconsistent with it. All philosophers will agree on this point; for
to say that a given action is consistent or inconsistent with the
present character of a person whom one knows is not to bind the future
to the present. But the determinist goes much further: he asserts
that our solution is provisional simply because we never know all the
conditions of the problem: that our forecast would gain in probability
in proportion as we were provided with a larger number of these
conditions; that, therefore, complete and perfect knowledge of all the
antecedents without any exception would make our forecast infallibly
true. Such, then, is the hypothesis which we have to examine.

[Sidenote: To know _completely_ the antecedents and conditions of an
action is to be actually performing it.]

For the sake of greater definiteness, let us imagine a person called
upon to make a seemingly free decision under serious circumstances:
we shall call him Peter. The question is whether a philosopher Paul,
living at the same period as Peter, or, if you prefer, a few centuries
before, would have been able, knowing _all_ the conditions under which
Peter acts, to foretell with certainty the choice which Peter made.

There are several ways of picturing the mental condition of a person at
a given moment. We try to do it when e.g. we read a novel; but whatever
care the author may have taken in depicting the feelings of his hero,
and even in tracing back his history, the end, foreseen or unforeseen,
will add something to the idea which we had formed of the character:
the character, therefore, was only imperfectly known to us. In truth,
the deeper psychic states, those which are translated by free acts,
express and sum up the whole of our past history: if Paul knows all
the conditions under which Peter acts, we must suppose that no detail
of Peter's life escapes him, and that his imagination reconstructs and
even lives over again Peter's history. But we must here make a vital
distinction. When I myself pass through a certain psychic state, I know
exactly the intensity of this state and its importance in relation to
the others, not by measurement or comparison, but because the intensity
of e.g. a deep-seated feeling is nothing else than the feeling itself.
On the other hand, if I try to give you an account of this psychic
state, I shall be unable to make you realize its intensity except by
some definite sign of a mathematical kind: I shall have to measure its
importance, compare it with what goes before and what follows, in
short determine the part which it plays in the final act. And I shall
say that it is more or less intense, more or less important, according
as the final act is explained by it or apart from it. On the other
hand, for my own consciousness, which perceived this inner state, there
was no need of a comparison of this kind: the intensity was given to
it as an inexpressible quality of the state itself. In other words,
the intensity of a psychic state is not given to consciousness as a
special sign accompanying this state and denoting its power, like an
exponent in algebra; we have shown above that it expresses rather its
shade, its characteristic colouring, and that, if it is a question of
a feeling, for example, its intensity consists in being felt. Hence
we have to distinguish two ways of assimilating the conscious states
of other people: the one dynamic, which consists in experiencing them
oneself; the other static, which consists in substituting for the
consciousness of these states their image or rather their intellectual
symbol, their idea. In this case the conscious states are _imagined_
instead of being _reproduced_; but, then, to the image of the psychic
states themselves some indication of their _intensity_ should be added,
since they no longer act on the person in whose mind they are pictured
and the latter has no longer any chance of experiencing their force by
actually feeling them. Now, this indication itself will necessarily
assume a quantitative character: it will be pointed out, for example,
that a certain feeling has more strength than another feeling, that it
is necessary to take more account of it, that it has played a greater
part; and how could this be known unless the later history of the
person were known in advance, with the precise actions in which this
multiplicity of states or inclinations has issued? Therefore, if Paul
is to have an adequate idea of Peter's state at any moment of his
history, there are only two courses open; either, like a novelist who
knows whither he is conducting his characters, Paul must already know
Peter's final act, and must thus be able to supplement his mental image
of the successive states through which Peter is going to pass by some
indication of their value in relation to the whole of Peter's history;
or he must make up his mind to pass through these different states,
not in imagination, but in reality. The former hypothesis must be put
on one side since the very point at issue is whether, the antecedents
_alone_ being given, Paul will be able to foresee the final act. We
find ourselves compelled, therefore, to alter radically the idea
which we had formed of Paul: he is not, as we had thought at first, a
spectator whose eyes pierce the future, but an actor who plays Peter's
part in advance. And notice that you cannot exempt him from any detail
of this part, for the most common-place events have their importance in
a life-story; and even supposing that they have not, you cannot decide
that they are insignificant except in relation to the final act,
which, by hypothesis, is not given. Neither have you the right to cut
short--were it only by a second--the different states of consciousness
through which Paul is going to pass before Peter; for the effects of
the same feeling, for example, go on accumulating at every moment of
duration, and the sum total of these effects could not be realized all
at once unless one knew the importance of the feeling, taken in its
totality, in relation to the final act, which is the very thing that is
supposed to remain unknown. But if Peter and Paul have experienced the
same feelings in the same order, if their minds have the same history,
how will you distinguish one from the other? Will it be by the body in
which they dwell? They would then always differ in some respect, viz.,
that at no moment of their history would they have a mental picture
of the same body. Will it be by the place which they occupy in time?
In that case they would no longer be present at the same events: now,
by hypothesis, they have the same past and the same present, having
the same experience. You must now make up your mind about it: Peter
and Paul are one and the same person, whom you call Peter when he acts
and Paul when you recapitulate his history. The more complete you
made the sum of the conditions which, when known, would have enabled
you to predict Peter's future action, the closer became your grasp of
his existence and the nearer you came to living his life over again
down to its smallest details: you thus reached the very moment when,
the action taking place, there was no longer anything to be foreseen,
but only something to be done. Here again any attempt to reconstruct
ideally an act really _willed_ ends in the mere witnessing of the act
whilst it is being performed or when it is already done.

[Sidenote: Hence meaningless to ask whether an act can be foreseen when
_all_ its antecedents are given.]

Hence it is a question devoid of meaning to ask: Could or could not
the act be foreseen, given the sum total of its antecedents? For there
are two ways of assimilating these antecedents, the one dynamic the
other static. In the first case we shall be led by imperceptible steps
to identify ourselves with the person we are dealing with, to pass
through the same series of states, and thus to get back to the very
moment at which the act is performed; hence there can no longer be any
question of foreseeing it. In the second case, we presuppose the final
act by the mere fact of annexing to the qualitative description of the
previous states the quantitative appreciation of their importance.
Here again the one party is led merely to realize that the act is not
yet performed when it is to be performed, and the other, that when
performed it is performed. This, like the previous discussion, leaves
the question of freedom exactly where it was to begin with.

[Sidenote: The two fallacies involved: (1) regarding intensity as a
magnitude, not a quality; (2) substituting material symbol for dynamic
process.]

By going deeper into this twofold argument, we shall find, at its very
root, the two fundamental illusions of the reflective consciousness.
The first consists in regarding: intensity as a mathematical property
of psychic states and not, as we said at the beginning of this essay,
as a special quality, as a particular shade of these various states.
The second consists in substituting for the concrete reality or dynamic
progress, which consciousness perceives, the material symbol of this
progress when it has already reached its end, that is to say, of the
act already accomplished together with the series of its antecedents.
Certainly, once the final act is completed, I can ascribe to all the
antecedents their proper value, and picture the interplay of these
various elements as a conflict or a composition of forces. But to ask
whether, the antecedents being known as well as their value, one could
foretell the final act, is to beg the question; it is to forget that
we cannot know the value of the antecedents without knowing the final
act, which is the very thing that is not yet known; it is to suppose
wrongly that the symbolical diagram which we draw in our own way for
representing the action _when completed_ has been drawn by the action
itself _whilst progressing,_ and drawn by it in an automatic manner.

[Sidenote: Claiming to foresee an action always comes back to confusing
time with space.]

Now, in these two illusions themselves a third one is involved, and
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.






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