Chapter III: The Organization of Conscious States (3)

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.