202 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



dynamic processes, because we are concerned with their influence 

 alone. Their duration is this very influence, and consequently it will 

 not do to shorten future duration in order to picture it beforehand; 

 we are bound to live this duration while it is unfolding. As regards 

 deep-seated psychic states, there is no apparent diference between fore- 

 seeing, seeing, and acting. 



Now if duration is what we say, deep-seated psychic 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 physical can again encounter identical ele- 

 mentary conditions, duration is something real for the consciousness, which pre- 

 serves the trace of it, and we caimot here speak of identical conditions, because the 

 same moment does not occur twice.' 



The determinist argues that psychic phenomena are subject to 



the physical law — ^the same antecedents, the same consequents — 



but in inner states the same antecedents will never 



® , f™o» * occur again. If it is asserted that the eflfect is bound 

 Psychic states • i i • -n > t ■% ^ r 



Never Occur "P ^^th the cause, it will mean either that the future 



Twice: Repe- action might have been foreseen, provided the ante- 

 tition Itself cedents were given, or the action having been per- 

 Experiences formed, any other action under the same conditions 

 would have been impossible. But we have seen that 

 both these assertions are meaningless, because they involve a false 

 conception of duration. Causality, meaning regular succession, 

 does not apply to conscious states, and therefore cannot be used 

 to disprove free wiU. CausaHty may be used as prefiguring in the 

 case of mathematics. 



The very movements by which we draw the circumference of a circle on a 

 sheet of paper generate all the mathematical properties of this figure: in this 

 sense, an unlimited number of theorems can be said to pre-exist within the defini- 

 tion, although they will be spread out in duration for the mathematician who 

 deduces them.' 



It is supposed that motion has something to do with consciousness, 

 and that space is filled with simultaneities, and that the physicist 

 must show us how to calculate these simultaneities and their relations 



* op. cit., pp. 199-200. • Ibid., p. 204. 



