204 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Although our deepest conscious states do not include numerical 

 multiplicity, we yet break them up into parts, and although the 

 elements of duration interpenetrate, yet duration expressed in terms 

 of extensity shows distinct moments. Deep-seated psychic states 

 can never occur more than once. Psychological phenomena led us to 

 this conclusion, and a study of causahty and duration has confirmed 

 it. Things can be analyzed, but not processes; extensity can be 

 broken up, but not duration. But if we persist in analyzing processes, 

 they become things, and duration becomes extensity. If we define the 

 free act by saying that it might have been left undone, we imply an 

 equivalence between concrete duration and its spatial symbol; and 

 as soon as we admit this equivalence we are led to the most rigid 

 determinism. If we define the free act as "that which could not be 

 foreseen, even when all the conditions were known in advance," we 

 Causation and place ourselves at the moment when the act is being 

 Freedom performed, for that is what we mean by deaUng with 



Explained concrete duration ; else we must admit that the matter of 

 psychic duration can be pictured symbolically in advance, and that 

 means treating time as a homogeneous medium or reasserting the 

 equivalence of concrete duration with its spatial symbol, and this once 

 more brings us to determinism. If we define the free act by saying 

 that it is not of necessity determined by its cause, we mean that the 

 same inner causes will not always call forth the same effects, and we 

 admit 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. Once 

 more we are brought back to the idea of equivalence between duration 

 and its spatial symbol and led to determinism. 



Every demand for explanation in regard to freedom comes back, without our 

 suspecting it, to the following questions: "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 



Freedom Is the 

 Clearest of 

 Facts 



