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 Μ Ο 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 Μ Ο, no point O, no path Ο 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 projecttime into space, and we base our reasoning, consciously or unconsciously, on this geometrical figure. But this figure represents athingand not aprogress; 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?
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 thinkingof 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 andnot 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.
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 aprobableconclusion and those who speak of aninfallibleforesight. To say thata 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.
To knowcompletelythe 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 youprefer, a few centuries before, would have been able, knowingallthe 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 andwhat 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 areimaginedinstead of beingreproduced; but, then, to the image of the psychic states themselves some indication of theirintensityshould 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, forexample, 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 antecedentsalonebeing 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 inrelation 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 againdown 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 reallywilledends in the mere witnessing of the act whilst it is being performed or when it is already done.
Hence meaningless to ask whether an act can be foreseen whenallits 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.
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, weshall 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 actionwhen completedhas been drawn by the action itselfwhilst progressing,and drawn by it in an automatic manner.
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 Μ Ο X Y traced out by a moving body M in space. You then blot out in thought the part Ο X Y of this curve, and you inquire whether, knowing Μ Ο, you would have been able to determine the portion Ο X of the curve which the moving body describes beyond O.
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 Μ Ο 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 Μ 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 Μ Ο was nota 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 Μ Ο 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 Μ Ο 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 Μ Ο X Y in its tracing with the line Μ Ο 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 Μ Ο X Y complete: he himself has just been completing it.
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 anticipationof 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.
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 symboltdoes 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 ofsimultaneities: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 durationlived,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 andsunset. 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.
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 thisconsciousness 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.
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 toscience, 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 theresultsof 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 preciseresult 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?
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 theprogresswhich constitutes its very existence, becomes athingwhich 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 tolivethis duration whilst it is unfolding. As far as deep-seated psychic states are concerned, there is no perceptible difference between foreseeing, seeing, and acting.
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.
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-seatedpsychic 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 callcausality 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.
Analysis οf 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 perhapsyield 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.
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 phenomenaa, b, c, d,previously perceived, can occur again in the same shape; (2) that a certain phenomenonP,which appeared after the conditionsa, 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 adefinite consequentwhereverexperience 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 exactlybetween 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.
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 withonetype 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 themequivalent 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 tangiblereality,—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 relationsof 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.
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 initself, 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 thatthis 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.
The necessary determination of phenomena implies non-duration; but weendureand 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 Ichange,because Iendure.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 notendure as we do ourselves, nevertheless there must be some reason why phenomena are seen tosucceedone 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 notendurelike 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 mathematicalform, thanks to a certain conception of duration which, without seeming to be so, is fairly familiar to common sense.