20P UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



determinism results. The symbols and figures give only the memory 

 of the process and not the dynamic progress which issued in the act. 

 If only one course of action were possible, why did we believe our- 

 selves free ? Both questions come back to this — Is time space ? 



Bergson then asks if the prediction of an act is possible. But in 

 order to predict an act we must know completely the antecedents and 



. , ,, . conditions of an action, and to know completely the 

 It Is Meaning- , , ,. . . . . , „ 



less to Ask antecedents and conditions of an action is to be actually 



Whether an performing it. We have not the right to cut short. 

 Act Can Be even by a second, the chfferent 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." Therefore it is meaning- 

 less to ask whether an act can be foretold, given all its antecedents. 

 Whenever we claim to foresee an action, we confuse time with space. 

 Time does not require to be seen, but to be lived. Science seems to 

 point to many cases where we anticipate the future, as in astronomical 

 predictions. "Does not, then, the human intellect embrace in the 

 present moment immense intervals of duration still to come?" But 

 a prediction of this kind does not resemble in the least the prediction 

 of a voluntary act. 



If all the movements of the universe went twice as fast, there 

 would be no change in astronomical phenomena or in mathematical 

 equations; for time does not stand for duration, but for a relation 

 between two durations, for a certain number of simultaneities. These 

 simultaneities would still take place, but the intervals between them 

 would have diminished. "These intervals are just duration lived, 

 duration which our consciousness perceives, and our consciousness 

 would soon inform us of a shortening of the day, if we had not experi- 

 enced the usual amount of duration between sunrise and sunset." 

 These intervals do not enter into the calculations of astronomical 

 hypotheses, so that into a psychological duration of a few seconds 



