ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE 229 



or even once unless he is sure to enjoy it ; although we 

 once met (say) Bismarck, we are quite capable of hearing 

 him mentioned without relating the occasion when we 

 met him. In this sense, everybody thinks that he him- 

 self has free will, though he knows that no one else has. 

 The desire for this kind of free will seems to be no better 

 than a form of vanity. I do not believe that this desire 

 can be gratified with any certainty ; but the other, more 

 respectable desires are, I believe, not inconsistent with 

 any tenable form of determinism. 



We have thus two questions to consider : (1) Are 

 human actions theoretically predictable from a sufficient 

 number of antecedents ? (2) Are human actions subject 

 to an external compulsion ? The two questions, as I 

 shall try to show, are entirely distinct, and we may 

 answer the first in the affirmative without therefore being 

 forced to give an affirmative answer to the second. 



(1) Are human actions theoretically predictable from a 

 sufficient number of antecedents ? Let us first endeavour 

 to give precision to this question. We may state the 

 question thus : Is there some constant relation between 

 an act and a certain number of earlier events, such that, 

 when the earlier events are given, only one act, or at 

 most only acts with some well-marked character, can 

 have this relation to the earlier events ? If this is the 

 case, then, as soon as the earlier events are known, it is 

 theoretically possible to predict either the precise act, 

 or at least the character necessary to its fulfilling the 

 constant relation. 



To this question, a negative answer has been given by 

 Bergson, in a form which calls in question the general 

 applicability of the law of causation. He maintains that 

 every event, and more particularly every mental event, 

 embodies so much of the past that it could not possibly 



