Time and Free Will

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.

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.

Sur l'influence de sa philosophie sur les élèves des lycées, Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Philos., Jan. 1908, p. 21.

Jean Blum, La philosophie de M. Bergson et la poésie symboliste, ( Mercure de France, Sept. 15, 1906).

A. Farges, L'erreur fondamentale de la philosophie nouvelle, ( Revue thomiste, May-June, 1909).

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

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.

The two aspects of the self, on the surface well-defined conscious states, deeper down states which interpenetrate and form organic whole.

But how can a more intense sensation contain one of less intensity?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The essence of pity is thus a need for self-abasement, an aspiration downwards.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

This shadow is a reality to your consciousness, like the light itself.

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.

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.

But, unless they are identical, we do not at first see how two sensations can be equal.

I am now notified of the increase of the cause: but why should I call this notification an arithmetical difference?

In the first case you will find a difference between S and S' like that between the shades of a rainbow, and not at all an interval of magnitude.

The fact is that there is no point of contact between the unextended and the extended, between quality and quantity.

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.

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.

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?

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?

It is always by jerks, by sudden jumps, so to speak, that we advance from one to the other.

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.

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."

Let us ask consciousness to isolate itself from the external world, and, by a vigorous effort of abstraction, to become itself again.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is quite possible to divide an object, but not an act.

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

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.

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.

In this sense we might almost say that the numbers in daily use have each their emotional equivalent.

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.

Consciousness, goaded by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality, or perceives the reality only through the symbol.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And the mathematician who knew the position of the molecules or atoms of a human organism at a given moment... 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.

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.

But no one can tell whether the study of physiological phenomena in general, and of nervous phenomena in particular, will not reveal to us... some new kind of energy which may differ from the other two by rebelling against calculation.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Here will be found, within the fundamental self, a parasitic self which continually encroaches upon the other.

It is the deep-seated self rushing up to the surface; it is the outer crust bursting, suddenly giving way to an irresistible thrust.

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.

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.

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

In short this figure does not show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done.

But time is not a line along which one can pass again.

To know completely the antecedents and conditions of an action is to be actually performing it.

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.

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.

In order to put our finger on this vital difference, let us assume for a moment that some mischievous genius decreed that all the movements of the universe should go twice as fast.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The more the progress of mechanical explanations enables us to develop this conception of causality... the more the concrete existence of the phenomena of nature tends to vanish into algebraical smoke.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To put duration in space is really to contradict oneself and place succession within simultaneity.

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.

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.

Of time everything slips through its fingers but simultaneity, and of movement everything but immobility.

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.

It is because, although we are free whenever we are willing to get back into ourselves, it seldom happens that we are willing.

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.

Consciousness, compared to invisible musician, 147 ; as epiphenomenon, 152 ; Kant separates external perception and, 222 ; succession without distinction in, 227 ; matter and form of, 234 .

Pure duration is wholly qualitative; it is not measurable, and has nothing to do with space.

Conscious force or free will may escape law of energy; illegitimate extension of, 155, 230.

Free action compared to over-ripe fruit; the self infallible in affirming its freedom.

All that science retains of motion is immobility.

Language, unequal to psychological analysis, dominates thought and gives fixed form to fleeting sensations.

The pendulum spreads out the undivided tension of the spring, helping to cut up our psychic life into measurable oscillations.

Psychic phenomena as pure quality; intensity as compromise between quantity and quality.

Science eliminates duration from time and mobility from motion.

Free decisions spring from whole or fundamental self; covered over with crust of clean-cut psychic states.

Time as ghost of, 99; duration expressed in terms of, 101, no; order of succession implies, 101 f.

Time as a homogeneous medium, nothing but space; distinct from pure duration; as ghost of space.

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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 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.

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?

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.

It is quite possible to divide an object, but not an act.

Consciousness, goaded by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality, or perceives the reality only through the symbol.

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.

It is the deep-seated self rushing up to the surface; it is the outer crust bursting, suddenly giving way to an irresistible thrust.

In short this figure does not show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done.

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.

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.