2o8 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STtJDIES 



instead of lying side by side, and form a heterogeneity where the 

 meaning of necessary determination is lost, then our deeper self 

 is a free cause, and we have absolute knowledge of ourselves. But 

 since this deeper self cannot be expressed in words, except by changing 

 its nature, it is doubtless a great temptation to apply the distinctions 

 of outer life to its own Hfe, and to replace the qualitative multiplicity 

 by a numerical plurality, set side by side and expressed by words. 

 We thus get a homogeneous time instead of a heterogeneous duration. 

 And this mechanism which we invented to explain our conduct will 

 end by controlKng it, and we shall have automatism instead of free- 

 dom; all difference between duration and extensity, succession and 

 simultaneity, will be aboUshed. But we should see that if our past 

 states cannot be expressed in words or reconstructed in juxtaposition, 

 it is because they are phases of our real and concrete duration, a 

 heterogeneous duration and a living one; also that the idea of deter- 

 mination loses its meaning, that there is no question of foreseeing the 

 act, or reasoning about the possibility of a contrary act after it has 

 once been performed; for to have the conditions given is, in concrete 

 duration, to place one's self at the very moment the act is being per- 

 formed. We must try to understand the illusion which makes one 

 party deny freedom and the other define it. It is because the steps 

 from concrete duration to symboUcal duration are gradual, because 

 we are seldom willing to get back into our real selves and be free, 

 and because even when the action is free we cannot reason about it, 

 without setting its conditions out in space and no longer in duration. 

 The problem of freedom has sprung from a misunderstanding, and 

 "has its origin in the illusion through which we confuse succession and 

 simultaneity, duration and extensity, quaUty and quantity." 



