John Alexander Gunn

INTRODUCTORY: The central problem of our period—The reconciliation of science with man’s beliefs centres around the question of Freedom—Unsatisfactoriness of Kant’s solution felt.

I. The positivist belief in universal and rigid determinism, especially shown in Taine. Renan’s view.

II. Cournot and Renouvier uphold Freedom—Strong logical and moral case put forward for it.

III. The new spiritualists, Ravaisson and Lacheher, set Freedom in the forefront of their philosophy—FouillÉe attempts a reconciliation by the idea of Freedom as a determining force—Guyau, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson insist on the reality of Freedom—They surpass Cournot and Renouvier by upholding contingency —This is especially true of Guyau, Boutroux and Bergson.

Belief in creativeness and spontaneity replace the older belief in determinism.

The discussions regarding the relation between science and philosophy led the thinkers of our period naturally to the crucial problem of freedom. Science has almost invariably stood for determinism, and men were becoming impatient of a dogmatism which, by its denial of freedom, left little or no place for man, his actions, his beliefs, his moral feelings.

“La nature fatale offre À la LibertÉ
Un problÈme.”^[1]

[1] Guyau, in his Vers d’un Philosophe, “Moments de Foi—I.,” En lisant Kant, p. 57.

It was precisely this problem which was acutely felt in the philosophy of our period as it developed and approached the close of the century.

In a celebrated passage of his Critique of Judgment the philosopher Kant had drawn attention to the necessity of bringing together the concept of freedom and the concept of nature as constructed by modern science, for the two were, he remarked, separated by an abyss. He himself felt that the realm of freedom should exercise an influence upon the realm of science, but his own method prohibited his attempting to indicate with any preciseness what that influence might be. The fatal error of his system, the artificial division of noumena and phenomena, led him to assign freedom only to the world of noumena. Among phenomena it had no place, but reigned transcendent, unknown and unknowable, beyond the world we know.

The artificiality of such a solution was apparent to the thinkers who followed Kant, and particularly was this felt in France. “Poor consolation is it,” remarked FouillÉe, in reply to Kant’s view, “for a prisoner bound with chains to know that in some unknown realm afar he can walk freely devoid of his fetters.”

The problem of freedom, both in its narrow sphere of personal free-will and in its larger social significance, is one which has merited the attention of all peoples in history. France, however, has been pre-eminently a cradle for much acute thought on this matter. It loomed increasingly large on the horizon as the Revolution approached, it shone brilliantly in Rousseau. Since the Revolution it has been equally discussed, and is the first of the three watchwords of the republic, whose philosophers, no less than its politicians, have found it one of their main themes.

The supreme importance of the problem of freedom in our period was due mainly to the need felt by all thinkers for attempting, in a manner different from that of Kant, a reconciliation between science and morals (science et conscience), and to find amid the development of scientific thought a place for the personality of the thinker himself, not merely as a passive spectator, but as an agent, a willing and acting being. Paul Janet, in his essays entitled ProblÈmes du XIX^e SiÈcle,^[2] treating the question of science, asks whether the growing precision of the natural sciences and “the extension of their ‘positive’ methods, which involve a doctrine or assumption of infallible necessity, do not imperil gravely the freedom of the moral agent?” While himself believing that, however closely the sciences may seem to encroach upon the free power of the human soul, they will only approach in an indefinite “asymptote,” never succeeding in annulling it, he senses the importance of the problem. Science may endeavour to tie us down to a belief in universal and rigid determinism, but the human spirit revolts from the acceptance of such a view, and acclaims, to some degree at least, the reality of a freedom which cannot be easily reconciled with the determinist doctrines.

[2] Published in 1872.

In the period which we have under review the central problem is undoubtedly that of freedom. Practically all the great thinkers in France during this period occupied themselves with this problem, and rightly so, for they realised that most of the others with which philosophy concerns itself depend in a large degree upon the attitude adopted to freedom. Cournot, Renouvier, Ravaisson, Lachelier, FouillÉe, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson have played the chief part in the arena of discussion, and although differing considerably in their methods of treatment and not a little in the form of their conclusions, they are at one in asserting the vital importance of this problem and its primacy for philosophy. The remark of FouillÉe is by no means too strong: “The problem which we are going to discuss is not only a philosophical problem; it is, par excellence, the problem for philosophy. All the other questions are bound up with this.”^[3] This truth will be apparent when, after showing the development of the doctrines concerning freedom, we come, in our subsequent chapters, to consider its application to the questions of progress, of ethics and of the philosophy of religion.

[3] In his preface to his Thesis LibertÉ et DÉterminisme, later editions, p. vii.

I

We find in the thought of our period a very striking development or change in regard to the problem of freedom. Beginning with a strictly positivist and naturalist belief in determinism, it concludes with a spiritualism or idealism which not only upholds freedom but goes further in its reaction against the determinist doctrines by maintaining contingency.

Taine and Renan both express the initial attitude, a firm belief in determinism, but it is most clear and rigid in the work of Taine. His whole philosophy is hostile to any belief in freedom. The strictly positivist, empiricist and naturalist tone of his thought combined with the powerful influence of Spinoza’s system to produce in him a firm belief in necessity—a necessity which, as we have seen, was severely rational and of the type seen in mathematics and in logic. Although it must also be admitted that in this view of change and development Taine was partly influenced by the Hegelian philosophy, yet his formulations were far more precise and mathematical than those of the German thinker.

We have, in considering his attitude to science, seen the tenacious manner in which he clings to his dogma of causality or universal necessity. All living things, man included, are held in the firm grip of “the steel pincers of necessity.” Every fact and every law in the universe has its raison explicative, as Taine styles it. He quotes with approval, in his treatment of this question at the close of his work De l’Intelligence, the words of the great scientist and positivist Claude Bernard: “Il y a un dÉterminisme absolu, dans les conditions d’existence des phÉnomÈnes naturels, aussi bien pour les corps vivants que pour les corps bruts.”^[4] In Taine and the school of scientists like Bernard, whose opinions on this matter he voices, no room is accorded to freedom.

[4] De l’Intelligence, vol. 2, p. 480, the quotation from Bernard is to be found in his Introduction À l’Etude de la MÉdecine expÉrimentale, p. 115.

Taine’s belief in universal necessity and his naturalistic outlook led him to regard man from the physical standpoint as a mechanism, from the mental point of view a theorem. Vice and virtue are, to quote his own words, “products just as vitriol or sugar.” This remark having appeared to many thinkers a scandalous assertion, Taine explained in an article contributed to the Journal des DÉbats^[5] that he did not mean to say that vice and virtue were, like vitriol or sugar, chemical but they are nevertheless products, moral products, which moral elements bring into being by their assemblage. And, he argues, just as it is necessary in order to make vitriol to know the chemical elements which go to its composition, so in order to create in man the hatred of a lie it is useful to search for the psychological elements which, by their union, produce truthfulness.

[5] On December 19th, 1872.

Even this explanation of his position, however, did not prevent the assertion being made that such a view entirely does away with all question of moral responsibility. To this criticism Taine objected. “It does not involve moral indifference. We do not excuse a wicked man because we have explained to ourselves the causes of his wickedness. One can be determinist with Leibnitz and nevertheless admit with Leibnitz that man is responsible —that is to say, that the dishonest man is worthy of blame, of censure and punishment, while the honest man is worthy of praise, respect and reward.”

In one of his Essais Taine further argued in defence of his doctrine of universal determination that since WE ourselves are determined—that is to say, since there is a psychological determinism as well as a physical determinism—we do not feel the restriction which this determinism implies, we have the illusion of freedom and act just as if we were free. To this FouillÉe replied that the value of Taine’s argument was equal to that of a man who might say, “Because I am asleep, all of me, all my powers and faculties, therefore I am in a state where I am perfectly free and responsible.” Certainly Taine’s remark that we are determined had nothing in common with the belief in that true determinism, which is equally true freedom, since it is self-determination. Taine professed no such doctrine, and rested in a purely naturalistic fatalism, built upon formulÆ of geometry and logic, in abstraction from the actual living and acting of the soul, and this dogma of determinism, to which he clung so dearly, colours his view of ethics and of history. For Taine, “the World is a living geometry” and “man is a theorem that walks.”

Like Taine, Renan set out from the belief in universal causation, but he employed the conception not so much in a warfare against man’s freedom of action as against the theologians’ belief in miracle and the supernatural. There is none of Taine’s rigour and preciseness in Renan, and it is difficult to grasp his real attitude to the problem of freedom. If he ever had one, may be doubted. The blending of viewpoints, the paradox so characteristic of him, seems apparent even in this question.

His intense humanism prompted him to remarks in praise of freedom, and he seems to have recognised in man a certain power of freedom; but in view of his belief in universal cause he is careful to qualify this. Further, his intensely religious mind remained in love with the doctrine of divine guidance which is characteristic of Christian and most religious thought. Although Renan left the Church, this belief never left Renan. He sees God working out an eternal purpose in history, and this he never reconciled with the problem of man’s free will. The humanist in him could remark that the one object of life is the development of the mind, and the first condition for this is freedom. Here he appears to have in view freedom from political and religious restrictions. He is thinking of the educational problem. His own attitude to the ultimate question of freedom in itself, as opposed to determinism, is best expressed in his Examen d’une Conscience philosophique. He there shows that the universe is the result of a lengthy development, the. beginnings of which we do not know. “In the innumerable links of that chain,” says Renan, “we find not one free act before the appearance of man, or, if you like, living beings.” With man, however, freedom comes into the scheme of things. A free cause is seen employing the forces of nature for willed ends. Yet this is but nature itself blossoming to self-consciousness; this free cause emanates from nature itself. There is no rude break between man with his free power and unconscious nature. Both are interconnected. Freedom is indeed the appearance of something “new,” but it is not, insists Renan, something divorced from what has gone before.

We see in Renan a rejection of the severely deterministic doctrine of Taine, but it is by no means a complete rejection or refutation of it. Renan adheres largely to the scientific and positivist attitude which is such a feature of Taine’s work. His humanism, however, recognises the inadequacy of such doctrines and compels him to speak of freedom as a human factor, and he thus brings us a step nearer to the development of the case for freedom put forward so strongly by Cournot and Renouvier and by the neo-spiritualists.

II

A very powerful opposition to all doctrines based upon or upholding determinism shows itself in the work of Cournot and the neo-critical philosophy. The idea of freedom is a central one in the thought of both Cournot and Renouvier.

Cournot devoted his early labours to a critical and highly technical examination of the question of probability, considered in its mathematical form, a task for which he was well equipped.^[6] Being not only a man of science but also a metaphysician, or rather a philosopher who approached metaphysical problems from the impulse and data accorded him by the sciences, Cournot was naturally led to the wider problem of probabilitÉ philosophique. He shows in his Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances that hazard or chance are not merely words which we use to cover our ignorance, as Taine would have claimed. Over against the doctrine of a universal determinism he asserts the reality of these factors. The terms chance and hazard represent a real and vital element in our experience and in the nature of reality itself. Probability is a factor to be reckoned with, and this is so because of the elements of contingency in nature and in life. Freedom is bound up essentially with the vitality which is nature itself.

[6] See his Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances: “Hazard,” chap. iii.; “ProbabilitÉ Philosophique,” chap, iv., pp. 71-101; and chap. v., “De l’Harmonie et de la FinalitÉ,” pp. 101-144.

The neo-critical philosopher, Renouvier, is a notable champion of freedom. We have already seen the importance he attaches to the category of personality. For him, personality represents a consciousness in possession of itself, a free and rational harmony—in short, freedom personified.

From a strictly demonstrative point of view Renouvier thinks it is impossible to prove freedom as a fact. However, he lays before us with intense seriousness various. considerations of a psychological and a moral character which have an important bearing upon the problem. This problem, he asserts, not only concerns our actions but also our knowledge. To bring out this point clearly, Renouvier develops some of the ideas of his friend, Jules Lequier, on the notion of the autonomy of the reason, or rather of the reasonable will. In this way he shows doubt and criticism to be themselves signs of freedom, and asserts that we form our notions of truth freely, or that at least they are creations of our free thought, not laid upon us by an external authority.

More light is thrown on the problem by considering what Renouvier calls vertige mental, a psychopathological condition due to a disturbance of the rational harmony or self-possession which constitutes the essence of the personal consciousness. This state is characterised by hallucination and error. It is the extreme opposite of the self-conscious, reflective personality in full possession of itself and exercising its will rationally. Renouvier shows that between these two extremes there are numerous planes of vertige mental in which the part played by our will is small or negligible, and we are thus victims of habit or tendency. Is there, then, any place for freedom? There most certainly is, says Renouvier, for our freedom manifests itself whenever we inhibit an action to which we are excited by habit, passion or imagination. Our freedom is the product of reflection. We are at liberty to be free, to determine ourselves in accordance with higher motives. This power is just our personality asserting itself, and it does not contradict our being, more often than not, victims of habit. We have it in our power to make fresh beginnings. Renouvier’s disbelief in strict continuity is here again apparent. We must admit freedom of creation in the personality itself, and not seek to explain our actions by trying to ascend some scale of causes to infinity. There is no such thing as a sum to infinity of a series; there is no such thing as the influence of an infinite series of causes upon the performance of a consciously willed act in which the personality asserts its initiative— that is, its power of initiation of a new series, in short, its freedom.

Passing from these psychological considerations, Renouvier calls our attention to some of a moral nature, no less important, in his opinion, for shedding light upon the nature of freedom. If, he argues, all is necessary, if all human actions are predetermined, then popular language is guilty of a grave extravagance and appears ridiculous, insinuating, as it does, that many acts might have been left undone and many events might have occurred differently, and that a man might have done other than he did. In the light of the hypothesis of rigorous necessity, the mention of ambiguous futures and the notion of “being otherwise” (le pouvoir Être autrement) seem foolish. Science may assert the docrine of necessity and preach it valiantly, but the human conscience feels it to be untrue and will not be gainsaid. The scientist himself is forced to admit that man does not accept his gospel of universal predestination or fatalism. This Renouvier recognises as an important point in the debate. Strange, is it not, he remarks, that the mind of the philosopher himself, a sanctuary or shrine for truth, should appear as a rebellious citadel refusing to surrender to the truth of this universal necessity. We believe ourselves to be free agents or, at least beings who are capable of some free action. However slight such action, it would invalidate the hypothesis of universal necessity.

If all things are necessitated, then moral judgments, the notions of right and of duty, have no foundation in the nature of things. Virtue and crime lose their character; the sentiments and feelings, such as regret, hope, fear, desire, change their meaning or become meaningless. Renouvier lays great stress upon these moral considerations.

Again, if everything be necessitated, error is as necessary as truth. The false is indeed true, being necessary, and the true may become false. Disputes rage over what is false or true, but these disputes cannot be condemned, for they themselves are, by virtue of the hypothesis, necessary, and the disputes are necessarily absurd and ridiculous from this point of view. Where then is truth? Where is morality? We have here no basis for either. Looking thus at history, all its crimes and infamies are equally lawful, for they are inevitable; such is the result, Renouvier shows, of viewing all human action as universally predetermined.

The objections thus put forward by Renouvier against the doctrine of universal necessity are powerful ones. They possess great weight and result in the admission, even by its upholders, that “the judgment of freedom is a natural datum of consciousness and is bound up with our reflective judgments upon which we act, being itself the foundation of these.”

Yet, we have, Renouvier reminds us, no logical proof of the reality of freedom. We feel ourselves moved, spontaneously and unconstrained. The future, in so far as it depends upon ourselves, appears not as prearranged but ambiguous, open.^[7] Whether our judgment be true or false, we in practical life act invariably on the belief in freedom. That, of course, as Renouvier admits at this stage of his discussion, does not prove that our belief is not an illusion. It is a feeling, natural and spontaneous.

[7] Cf., later, Bergson’s remark: “The portals of the future stand wide open, the future is being made.”

One of the most current forms of the doctrine of freedom has been that known as the “liberty of indifference.” The upholders of this theory regard the will as separated from motives and ends. The operation of the will is regarded by them as indifferent to the claims or influence of reason or feeling. Will is superadded externally to motives, where such exist, or may be superimposed on intellectual views even to the extent of annulling these. Judgment and will are separated in this view, and the will is a purely arbitrary or indifferent factor. It can operate without reason against reason. The opponents of freedom find little difficulty in assailing this view, in which the will appears to operate like a dice or a roulette game, absolutely at hazard, reducing man to a non-rational creature. Such a type of will, however, Renouvier declares to be non-existent, for every man who has full consciousness of an act of his has at the same time a consciousness of an end or purpose for this act, and he proposes to realise by this means a good which he regards as preferable to any other. In so far as he has doubts of this preference the act and the judgment will be suspended. He must, however, if he be an intelligent being, pursue what he deems to be his good—that is to say, what he deems to be good at the time of acting. Renouvier here agrees with Socrates and Plato in the view that no man deliberately and knowingly wills what he considers to be evil or to be bad for him. Virtue involves knowledge, and although there is the almost proverbial phrase of Ovid and of Paul, about seeing and approving the better, yet nevertheless doing the worse, it is a general statement which does not express an antithesis as present to consciousness at the time of action. The agent may afterwards say

. . . “Video meliora proboque
deteriora sequor.”

but at the time of action “the worse” must appear to him as a good, at any rate then and in his own judgment. Further, beyond these psychological considerations there are grave moral objections, Renouvier points out, to admitting “an indifferent will,” for the acts of such a will being purely arbitrary and haphazard, the man will be no moral agent, no responsible person. A man who wills apart from the consideration of any motive whatever can never perform any meritorious action. Under the conception of an indifferent will the term “merit” ceases to have a meaning. The theologians who have asserted the doctrine (indeed, it seems to have originated, Renouvier thinks, with them) have readily admitted this point, for it opens up the way for their theory of divine grace or the good will of God acting directly upon or within the agent. Will and merit are for them quite separate, the latter being due to the mystical operations of divine favour or grace, in honour of which the indifference of the will has been postulated. Philosophers not given to appeals to divine grace, who have upheld the doctrine of the indifferent will, have really been less consistent than the theoloians and have fallen into grave error.

Renouvier appeals to the testimony of the penal laws of all nations in favour of his criticism of an indifferent will. Motive is deemed a real factor, for men are not deemed to have acted indifferently. Some deliberation, indeed, is implied in all action which is conscious and human, some comparison of motives and a conscious, decision. The values of truth, as well as those of morality are equally fatal to the indifferentist; for, asks Renouvier, is a man to be regarded as not determined to affirm as true what he judges to be true?

The doctrine of freedom as represented by that of an indifferent will is no less vicious, Renouvier affirms, than the opposing doctrine of universal necessity. The truth is that they both rest on fictions. “Indifferentism” imagines a will divorced from judgment, separated from the rational man himself, an unseizable power, a mysterious absolute cause unconnected with reflection or deliberation, a mere chimera. For determinism the will is equally a fiction.

A way out of this difficulty is to be found, according to Renouvier, in viewing the will in a manner different from that of the “indifferentists.” Let us suppose the will bound up with motive, a motive drawn from the intellectual and moral equipment of the man. This, however, gives rise to psychological determinism. The will, it is argued, follows always the last determination of the understanding. Greater subtilty attends on this argument against freedom than those put forward on behalf of physical determinism. Renouvier sees that there is no escape from such a doctrine as psychological determinism unless we take a view of the will as bound up with the nature of man as a whole, with his powers of intellect and feeling. Such a will cannot be characterised as indifferent or as the mere resultant of motives.

The Kantian element in Renouvier’s thought is noticeable in the strong moral standpoint from which he discusses all problems, and this is particularly true of his discussion of this very vital one of freedom. He is by no means, however, a disciple of Kant, and he joins battle strongly with the Kantian doctrine of freedom. This is natural in view of his entire rejection of Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” or noumena, and it follows therefrom, for Kant attached freedom only to the noumenal world, denying its operation in the world of phenomena. The rejection of noumena leaves Renouvier free to discuss freedom in a less remote or less artificial manner than that of Kant.

If it be true, argues Renouvier, that necessity rules supreme, then the human spirit can find peace in absolute resignation; and in looking back over the past history of humanity one need not have different feelings from those entertained by the geologist or paleontologist. Ethics, politics and history thus become purely “natural” sciences (if indeed ethics could here have meaning, would it not be identical with anthropology? At any rate, it would be purely positive. A normative view of ethics would be quite untenable in the face of universal necessity). Any inconvenience, pain or injustice would have to be accepted and not even named “evil,” much less could any effort be truly made to expel it from the scheme of things. To these accusations the defenders of necessity object. The practical man, they say, need not feel this, in so far as he is under the illusion of freedom and unaware of the rigorous necessity of all things. He need not refrain from action.

But this defence of necessity leads those who wish to maintain the case against it to continue the argument. Suppose that the agent does not forget that all is necessitated, what then? Under no illusion of the idea of freedom, he then acts at every moment of his existence in the knowledge that he cannot but do what he is doing, he cannot but will what he wills, he cannot but desire what he desires. In time this must produce, says Renouvier, insanity either of an idle type or a furious kind, he will become an indifferent imbecile or a raving fanatic, in either case a character quite abnormal and dangerous. These are extreme results, but between the two extremes all degrees of character are to be, found. The most common type of practical reason presents an antinomy in the system of universal necessity. The case for necessity must reckon with this fact—namely, that the operation of necessity has itself given rise to ethics which exists, and, according to the case, its existence is a necessary one; yet ethics constitutes itself in opposition to necessity, and under the sway of necessity is quite meaningless. Here is a paradox which is not lessened if we suppose the ethical position to be an absurd and false one. Whether false or not, morality in some form is practically as universal as human nature. That nature, Renouvier insists, can hardly with sincerity believe an hypothesis or a dogma which its own moral instincts belie continually.

If, on the other hand, truth lies with the upholders of freedom, then man’s action is seen to have great value and significance, for man then appears as creating a new order of things in the world. His new acts, Renouvier admits, will not be without preceding ones, without roots or reasons, but they will be without necessary connection with the whole scheme of things. He is thus creating a new order; he is creating himself and making his own history. Conscious pride or bitter remorse can both alike be present to him. The great revolutions of history will be regarded by him not as mystical sweepings of some unknown force external to himself, but as results of the thought and work of humanity itself. A philosophy which so regards freedom will thus be a truly “human” philosophy. Renouvier rightly recognises that the whole philosophy of history turns upon the attitude which we adopt to freedom.

In view of the many difficulties connected with the problem of freedom many thinkers would urge us to a compromise. Renouvier is aware of the dangers of this attitude, and he brings into play against it his logical method of dealing with problems. This does not contradict his statement about the indemonstrability of freedom, nor does it minimise the weight and significance of the moral case for freedom: it complements it. Between contradictories or incompatible propositions no middle course can be followed. Freedom and necessity cannot be both at the same time true, or both at the same time false, for of the two things one must be true—namely, either human actions are all of them totally predetermined by their conditions or antecedents, or they are not all of them totally predetermined. It is to this pass that we are brought in the logical statement of the case. Now sceptics would here assert that doubt was the only solution. This would not realh be a solution, and however legitimate doubt is in front of conflicting theories, it involves the death of the soul if it operates in practical affairs and in any circumstances where some belief is absolutely necessary to the conduct of life and to action.

The freedom in question, as Renouvier is careful to remind us, does not involve our maintaining the total indetermination of things or denial of the operations of necessity within limits. Room is left for freedom when it is shown that this necessity is not universal. Many consequences of free acts may be necessitated. For example, says Renouvier, I have a stone in my hand. I can freely will to hurl it north or south, high or low, but once thrown from my hand its path is strictly determined by the law of gravity. The voluntary movement of a man on the earth may, however slightly, alter the course of a distant planet. Freedom, we might say, operates in a sphere to which necessity supplies the matter. Ultimately any free act is a choice between two alternatives, equally possible, but both necessitated as possibilities. The points of free action may seem to take up a small amount of room in the world, so to speak, but we must realise how vital they are to any judgment regarding its character, and how tremendously important they are from a moral point of view. So far, claims Renouvier, from the admittance of freedom being a destruction of the laws of the universe, it really shows us a special law of that universe, not otherwise to be explained—namely, the moral law. Freedom is thus regarded by Renouvier as a positive fact, a moral certainty.

Freedom is the pillar of the neo-critical philosophy; it is the first truth involved at once in all action and in all knowledge. Truth and error are not well explained, or, indeed, at all explained, by a doctrine which, embracing them both as equally necessary, justifies them equally, and so in a sense verifies both of them. It was this point which Brochard developed in his work L’Erreur, which has neo-critical affinities. Man is only capable of science because he is free; it is also because he is free that he is subject to error.^[8] Renouvier claims that “we do not avoid error always, but we always can avoid it.”^[9] Truth and error can only be explained, he urges, by belief in the ambiguity of futures, movements of thought involving choice between opinions which conflict—in short, by belief in freedom. The calculation of probabilities and the law of the great numbers demonstrates, Renouvier claims, the indetermination of futures, and consciousness is aware of this ambiguity in practical life. This belief in the ambiguity of futures is a condition, he shows, of the exercise of the human consciousness in its moral aspect, and this consciousness in action regards itself as suspended before indetermination—that is, it affirms freedom. This affirmation of freedom Renouvier asserts to be a necessary element of any rational belief whatever. It alone gives moral dignity and supremacy to personality, whose existence is the deepest and most radical of all existences. The personal life in its highest sense and its noblest manifestation is precisely Freedom. Renouvier assures us that there is nothing mysterious or mystical about this freedom. It is not absolute liberty and contingency of all things; it is an attribute of persons. The part played thus freely by personality in the scheme or order of the universe proves to us that that order or scheme is not defined or formed in a predetermined manner; it is only in process of being formed, and our personal efforts are essential factors in its formation. The world is an order which becomes and which is creating itself, not a pre-established order which simply unrolls itself in time. For a proper understanding of the nature of this problem “we are obliged to turn to the practical reason. It is a moral affirmation of freedom which we require; indeed, any other kind of affirmation would, Renouvier maintains, presuppose this. The practical reason must lay down its own basis and that of all true reason, for reason is not divided against itself reason is not something apart from man; it is man, and man is never other than practical—i.e., acting.”^[10] Considered from this standpoint there are four cases which present themselves to the tribunal of our judgment—namely, the case for freedom, the case against freedom, the case for necessity and the case against necessity.

[8] De L’Erreur, p. 47.

[9] Psychologie rationnelle, vol. 2, p. 96.

[10] Psychologie rationnelle, vol. 2, p 78.

The position is tersely put in the Dilemma presented by Jules Lequier, the friend of Renouvier, quoted in the Psychologie rationnelle. There are four possibilities:

To affirm necessity, necessarily. To affirm necessity, freely. To affirm freedom, necessarily. To affirm freedom, freely.

On examining these possibilities we find that to affirm necessity, necessarily, is valueless, for its contradictory, freedom, is equally necessary. To affirm necessity, freely, does not offer us a better position, for here again it is necessity which is affirmed. If we affirm freedom necessarily, we are in little better case, for necessity operates again (although Renouvier notes that this gives a certain basis for morality). In the free affirmation of freedom, however, is to be found not only a basis for morals, but also for knowledge and the search for truth. Indeed, as we are thus forced “to admit the truth of either necessity or freedom, and to choose between the one and the other with the one or with the other,”^[11] we find that the affirmation of necessity involves contradiction, for there are many persons who affirm freedom, and this they do, if the determinist be right, necessarily. The affirmation of freedom, on the other hand, is free from such an absurdity.

[11] Ibid., p. 138.

Such is the conclusion to which Renouvier brings us after his wealth of logical and moral considerations. He combines both types of discussion and argument in order to undermine the belief in determinism and to uphold freedom, which is, in his view, the essential attribute of personality and of the universe itself. He thus succeeded in altering substantially the balance of thought in favour of freedom, and further weight was added to the same side of the scales by the new spiritualist group who placed freedom in the forefront of their thought.

III

The development of the treatment of this problem within the thought of the new spiritualists or idealists is extremely interesting, and it proceeded finally to a definite doctrine of contingency as the century drew to its close. The considerations set forth are usually psychological in tone, and not so largely ethical as in the neo-critical philosophy.

Ravaisson declared himself a champion of freedom. He accepted the principle of Leibnitz, to the effect that everything has a reason, from which it follows that everything is necessitated, without which there could be no certitude and no science. But, says Ravaisson, there are two kinds of necessity—one absolute, one relative. The former is logical, the type of the principle of identity, and is found in syllogisms and in mathematics, which is just logic applied to quantity. The other type of necessity is moral, and is, unlike the former, perfectly in accord with freedom. It indeed implies freedom, the freedom of self-determination. The truly wise man can- not help doing what is right and good. The slave of Passion and caprice and evil has no freedom. The wise man selecting the good chooses it infallibly, but at the time with perfect free-will. “It is perhaps because the good or the beautiful is simply nothing other than love—that is, the power of will in all its purity, and so to will what is truly good is to will oneself (c’est se vouloir soi-mÊme).”^[12]

[12] La Philosophie en France, p. 268.

Nature is not, as the materialists endeavour to maintain, entirely geometrical—that is to say, fatalistic in character. Morality enters into the scheme of things and, with it, ends freely striven for. There is present a freedom which is a kind of necessity, yet opposed to fatalism. This freedom involves a determination by conceptions of perfection, ideals of beauty and of good. “Fatality is but an appearance; spontaneity and freedom constitute reality.”^[13] So far, continues Ravaisson, from all things operating by brute mechanism or by pure hazard, things operate by the development of a tendency to perfection, to goodness and beauty. Instead of everything submitting to a blind destiny, everything obeys, and obeys willingly, a divine Providence.

[13] Ibid., p. 270.

Ravaisson’s fundamental spiritualism is clear in all this, and it serves as the starting-point for the thinkers who follow him. Spiritualism is bound up with spontaneity, creation, freedom, and this is his central point, this insistence on freedom. While resisting mechanical determination he endeavours to retain a determination of another kind—namely, by ends, a teleology or finalism. This is extremely interesting when observed in relation to the subsequent development in Lachelier, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson.

Lachelier’s treatment of freedom is an important landmark in the spiritualist development. By his concentrated analysis of the problem of induction he brought out the significance of efficient and final causes respectively. He appears as the pupil of Ravaisson, whose initial inspiration is apparent in his whole work, especially in his treatment of freedom. He dwells upon the fact of the spontaneity of the spirit—a point of view which Ravaisson succeeded in imparting to the three thinkers, Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson. Besides the influence of Ravaisson, however, that of Kant and Leibnitz appears in Lachelier’s attitude to freedom. Yet he passes beyond the Kantian position, and he rejects the double-aspect doctrine which Leibnitz maintained with regard to efficient and final causes. Lachelier insists that the spontaneity of spirit stands above and underlies the whole of nature. This is the point which Boutroux, under Lachelier’s influence, took up in his Contingence des Lois de la Nature. Lachelier, in attacking the purely mechanistic conception of the universe, endeavoured, as he himself put it, “to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for death and freedom for fatalism.” Rather than universal necessity it is universal contingence which is the real definition of existence. We are free to determine ourselves in accordance with ends we set before us, and to act in the manner necessary to accomplish those ends. Our life itself, as he shows in the conclusion of his brilliant little article Psychologie et MÉtaphysique, is creative, and we must beware of arguing that what we have been makes us what we are, for that character which we look upon as determining us need not do so if we free ourselves from habit, and, further, this character is, in any case, itself the result of our free actions over extended time, the free creation of our own personality.

While with Ravaisson and Lachelier the concept of freedom was being rather fully developed in opposition to the determinist doctrines, FouillÉe, in his brilliant and acute thesis on LibertÉ et DÉterminisme, endeavoured to call a halt to this supremacy of Freedom, and to be true to the principles of reconciliation which he laid down for himself in his philosophy. He confesses himself, at the outset, to be a pacifist rather than a belligerent in this classic dispute between determinists on the one hand and partisans of freedom on the other. He believes that, on intimate investigation pursued sufficiently far, the two opposing doctrines will be seen to converge. Such a declaration would seem to be dangerously superficial in a warfare as bitter and as sharp as this. It must be admitted that, as is the case with many who profess to conciliate two conflicting views, FouillÉe leaves us at times without precise and definite indication of his own position.

In contrast to the attitude of Ravaisson and Lachelier FouillÉe inclines in some respects to the attitude of Taine and many passages of his book show him to be holding at least a temporary brief for the partisans of determinism. He agrees notably with Taine in his objecting to the contention that under the determinist theory moral values lose their significance. FouillÉe claims that it is both incorrect and unfair to argue that “under the necessity-hypothesis a thing being all that it can be is thereby all that it should be.”^[14].

[14] La LibertÉ et le DÉterminisme, p. 51 (fourth edition).

He goes on to point out that the consciousness of independence, which is an essential of freedom, may be nothing more than a lack of consciousness of our dependence. Motives he is inclined to speak of as determining the will itself, while he looks upon the “liberty of indifference” or of hazard as merely a concession to the operations of mechanical necessity. The “liberty of indifference” is often the mere play of instinct and of fatality, while hazard, so far from being an argument in the hands of the upholders of freedom, is really a determination made previously by something other than one’s own will.

This is a direct attack upon the doctrines put forward by both Cournot and Renouvier. FouillÉe is well aware of this, and twenty pages of his thesis are devoted to a critical and hostile examination of the statements of both Renouvier and his friend Lequier.^[15] FouillÉe claims that these two thinkers have only disguised and misplaced the “liberty of indifference”; they have not, he thinks, really suppressed it, although both of them profess to reject it absolutely. A keen discussion between FouillÉe and Renouvier arose from this and continued for some time, being marked on both sides by powerful dialectic. Renouvier used his paper the Critique philosophique as his medium, while FouillÉe continued in subsequent editions of his thesis, in his IdÉe moderne du Droit and also in his acute study Critique des SystÈmes de Morale contemporains. FouillÉe took Renouvier to task particularly for his maintaining that if all be determined then truth and error are indistinguishable. FouillÉe claims that the distinction between truth and error is by no means parallel to that between necessity and freedom. An error may, he points out, be necessitated, and consequently we must look elsewhere for our doctrine of certitude than to the affirmation of freedom. In the philosophy of Renouvier, as we have seen, these two are intimately connected. FouillÉe criticises the neo-critical doctrine of freedom on the ground that Renouvier mars his thought by a tendency to look upon the determinist as a passive and inert creature. This, he says, is “the argument of laziness” applied to the intelligence. “One forgets,” says FouillÉe, “that if intelligence is a mirror, it is not an immovable and powerless mirror: it is a mirror always turning itself to reality.”^[16]

[15] Ibid., pp. 117-137.

[16] La LibertÉ et le DÉterminisme, p. 129.

On examining closely the difference between Renouvier and FouillÉe over this problem of freedom, we may attribute it to the fact that while the one thinker is distinctly and rigorously an upholder of continuity, the other believes in no such absolute continuity. For FouillÉe there is, in a sense, nothing new under the sun, while Renouvier in his thought, which has been well described as a philosophy of discontinuity, has a place for new things, real beginnings, and he is in this way linked up to the doctrine of creative development as set forth ultimately by Bergson. It will be seen also as we proceed that FouillÉe, for all he has to say on behalf of determinism, is not so widely separated in his view of freedom from that worked out by Bergson, although at the first glance the gulf between them seems a wide one.

FouillÉe, while attacking Renouvier, did not spare that other acute thinker, Lachelier, from the whip of his criticism. He takes objection to a passage in that writer’s Induction where he advocates the doctrine that the production of ideas “is free in the most rigorous sense of that word, since each idea is in itself absolutely independent of that which precedes it, and is born out of nothing, as is a world.” To this view of the spontaneity of the spirit FouillÉe opposes the remark that Lachelier is considering only the new forms which are assumed by a mechanism which is always operating under the same laws of causality. He asks us in this connection to imagine a kaleidoscope which is being turned round. The images which succeed each other will be in this sense a formal creation, a form independent of that which went before, but, as he is anxious to remind us, the same mechanical and geometrical laws will be operating continually in producing these forms.

Having had these encounters with the upholders of freedom, and thus to some degree having conveyed the impression of being on the side of the determinists, FouillÉe proceeds to the task he had set himself—namely, that of reconciliation. He felt the unsatisfactoriness of Kant’s treatment of freedom,^[17] and he endeavours to remedy the lack in Kant of a real link between the determinism of the natural sciences and the human consciousness of freedom, realised in the practical reason. FouillÉe proposes to find in his idÉes-forces a middle term and to offer us a solution of the problem at issue in the dispute.

[17] See above, p. 136.

He begins by showing that there has been an unfortunate neglect of one important factor in the case—a factor whose reality is frankly admitted by both parties. This central, incontestable fact is the idea of freedom. This idea, according to FouillÉe, arises in us as the result Of a combination of various psychological factors, such as notions of diversity, possibility, with the tendency to action arising from the notion of action, which thus shows itself as a force. The combination of these results in the genesis of the idea of freedom. Now the stronger this idea of freedom is in our minds the more we make it become a reality. It is an “idea-force” which by being thought tends to action and thus increases in power and fruitfulness. The idea of freedom becomes, by a kind of determinism, more powerful in proportion to the degree with which it is acted upon. Determinism thus reflects upon itself and in a curious way turns to operate against itself. This directing power of the idea of freedom cannot be denied even by the most rigorous upholders of determinism. They at least are forced to find room in their doctrine for the idea of freedom and its practical action on the lives of men, both individually and in societies. The vice of the doctrines of determinism has been the refusal to admit the reality of the liberating idea of freedom, which is tending always to realise itself.

The belief in freedom is, therefore, FouillÉe claims, a powerful force in the world. Nothing is a more sure redeemer of men and societies from evil ways than the realisation of this idea of freedom. So largely is this the case that indeed the extinction of the belief in freedom would, he argues, not differ much in consequence from the finding that freedom was an illusion, or, if it be a fact, its abolition.

Having thus rectified the doctrine of determinism by including a place within it for the idea of freedom, FouillÉe proceeds by careful analysis to show the error of belief in freedom understood as that of an indifferent will. This raises as many fallacious views as that of a determinism bereft of the idea of freedom. The capricious and indifferent liberty he rejects, and in so doing shows us the importance of the intelligent power of willing, and also reaffirms the determinists’ thesis of inability to do certain things. The psychology of character shows us a determined freedom, and in the intelligent personality a reconciliation of freedom and determinism is seen to be effected. FouillÉe shows that if it were not true that very largely what we have been makes us what we are, and that what we are determines our future actions, then education, moral guidance, laws and social sanctions would all be useless. Indifferentism in thought is the reversal of all thought.

FouillÉe sees that the antithesis between Freedom and Necessity is not absolute, and he modifies the warmth of Renouvier’s onslaughts upon the upholders of determinism. But he believes we can construct a notion of moral freedom which will not be incompatible with the determinism of nature. To effect this reconciliation, however, we must abandon the view of Freedom as a decision indifferently made, an action of sheer will unrelated to intelligence. Freedom is not caprice; it is, FouillÉe claims, a power of indefinite development.

Yet, in the long and penetrating Introduction to his volume on the Evolutionnisme des IdÉes-forces, FouillÉe points out that however much science may feel itself called upon to uphold a doctrine of determinism for its own specific purposes, we must remember that the sphere of science is not all-embracing. There is the sphere of action, and the practical life demands and, to a degree demonstrates, freedom. Fouillee admits in this connection the indetermination of the future, pour notre esprit. We act upon this idea of relative indeterminism, combining with it the idea of our own action, the part which we personally feel called upon to play. He recognises in his analysis how important is this point for the solution of the problem. We cannot overlook the contribution which our personality is capable of making to the whole unity of life and experience, not only by its achievements in action, but by its ideals, by that which we feel both can and should be. Herein lies, according to FouillÉe’s analysis, the secret of duty and the ideal of our power to fulfil it, based upon the central idea of our freedom. By thus acting on these ideas, and by the light and inspiration of these ideals, we tend to realise them. It is this which marks the point where a doctrine of pure determinism not only shows itself erroneous and inadequate, but as Fouillee puts it, the human consciousness is the point where it is obliged to turn against itself “as a serpent which bites its own tail.”^[18] Fatalism is a speculative hypothesis and nothing else. Freedom is equally an hypothesis, but, adds FouillÉe, it is an hypothesis which is at work in the world.

[18] Evolutionnisme des IdÉes-forces, Introduction, p. lxxiv.

In the thought of Guyau there is a further insistence upon freedom in spite of the fact that his spiritualism is super-added to much which reveals the naturalist and positive outlook. He upholds freedom and, indeed, contingency, urging, as against Ravaisson’s teleology, that there is no definite tendency towards truth, beauty and goodness. At all times, too, Guyau is conscious of union with nature and with his fellows in a way which operates against a facile assertion of freedom. In his Vers d’un Philosophe he remarks:

“Ce mot si doux au coeur et si cher, LibertÉ,
J’en prÉfÈrs encore un: c’est SolidaritÉ.”^[19]

[19] Vers d’un Philosophe, “SolidaritÉ,” p. 38.

The maintenance of the doctrine of liberty, which in view of the facts we are bound to maintain, does away, Guyau insists, with the doctrine of Providence; for him, as for Bergson, there is no prÉvision but only nouveautÉ in the universe. Guyau indeed is not inclined to admit even that end which Bergson seems to favour—namely, “spontaneity of life itself.” The world does not find its end in us, any more than we find our “ends” fixed for us in advance. Nothing is fixed, arranged or predetermined; there is not even a primitive adaptation of things to one another, for such adaptation would involve the pre-existence of ideas prior to the material world, together with a demiurge arranging things upon a plan in the manner of an architect. In reality there is no plan; every worker conceives his own. The world is a superb example, not of order, such as we associate with the idea of Providence in action, but the reverse, disorder, the result of contingency and freedom.

The supreme emphasis upon the reality of freedom appears, however, in the work of Boutroux and of Bergson at the end of our period. They arrive at a position diametrically opposed to that of the upholders of determinism, by their doctrines of contingency as revealed both in the evolution of the universe and in the realm of personal life. There is thus seen, as was the case with the problem of science, a complete “turn of the tide” in the development since Comte.

Boutroux, summing up his thesis La contingence des Lois de la Nature, indicates clearly in his concluding chapter his belief in contingency, freedom and creativeness. The old adage, “nothing is lost, nothing is created,” to which science seems inclined to attach itself, has not an absolute value, for in the hierarchy of creatures contingency, freedom, newness appear in the higher ranks. There is at work no doubt a principle of conservation, but this must not lead us to deny the existence and action of another principle, that of creation. The world rises from inorganic to organic forms, from matter to spirit, and in man himself from mere sensibility to intelligence, with its capacity for criticising and observing, and to will capable of acting upon things and modifying them by freedom.

Boutroux inclines to a doctrine of finalism somewhat after the manner of Ravaisson. The world he conceives as attracted to an end; the beautiful and the good are ideals seeking to be realised; but this belief in finality does not, he expressly maintains, exclude contingency. To illustrate this, Boutroux uses a metaphor from seamanship: the sailors in a ship have a port to make for, yet their adaptations to the weather and sea en route permit of contingency along with the finality involved in their making for port. So it is with beings in nature. They have not merely the one end, to exist amid the obstacles and difficulties around them, “they have an ideal to realise, and this ideal consists in approaching to God, to his likeness, each after his kind. The ideal varies with the creatures, because each has his special nature, and can only imitate God in and by his own nature.”^[20]

[20] La Contingence des Lois de la Nature, p. 158.

Boutroux’s doctrine of freedom and contingency is not opposed to a teleological conception of the universe, and in this respect he stands in contrast to Bergson, who, in the rigorous application of his theory of freedom, rules out all question of teleology. With Renouvier and with Bergson, however, Boutroux agrees in maintaining that this freedom, which is the basis of contingency in things, is not and cannot be a datum of experience, directly or indirectly, because experience only seizes things which are actually realised, whereas this freedom is a creative power, anterior to the act. Heredity, instinct, character and habit are words by which we must not be misled or overawed into a disbelief in freedom. They are not absolutely fatal and fully determined. The same will, insists Boutroux, which has created a habit can conquer it. Will must not be paralysed by bowing to the assumed supremacy of instincts or habits. Habit itself is not a contradiction of spontaneity; it is itself a result of spontaneity, a state of spontaneity itself, and does not exclude contingency or freedom.

Metaphysics can, therefore, according to Boutroux, construct a doctrine of freedom based on the conception of contingency. The supreme principles according to this philosophy will be laws, not those of the positive sciences, but the laws of beauty and goodness, expressing in some measure the divine life and supposing free agents. In fact the triumph of the good and the beautiful will result in the replacement of laws of nature, strictly so called, by the free efforts of wills tending to perfection—that is, to God.

Further studies upon the problem of freedom are to be found in Boutroux’s lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1892-93 in the course entitled De l’IdÉe de la Loi naturelle dans la Science et la Philosophie contemporaines. He there recognises in freedom the crucial question at issue between the scientists and the philosophers, for he states the object of this course of lectures as being a critical examination of the notion we have of the laws of nature, with a view to determining the situation of human personality, particularly in regard to free action.^[21] Boutroux recognises that when the domain of science was less extensive and less rigorous than it is now it was much easier to believe in freedom. The belief in Destiny possessed by the ancients has faded, but we may well ask ourselves, says Boutroux, whether modern science has not replaced it by a yet more rigorous fatalism.^[22] He considers that the modern doctrine of determinism rests upon two assumptions—namely, that mathematics is a perfectly intelligible science, and is the expression of absolute determinism; also that mathematics can be applied with exactness to reality. These assumptions the lecturer shows to be unjustifiable. Mathematics and experience can never be fitted exactly into each other, for there are elements in our experience and in our own nature which cannot be mathematically expressed. This Boutroux well emphasises in his lecture upon sociological laws, where he asserts that history cannot be regarded as the unrolling of a single law, nor can the principle of causality, strictly speaking, be applied to it.^[23] An antecedent certainly may be an influence but not a cause, as properly understood. He here agrees with Renouvier s position and attitude to history, and shows the vital bearing of the problem of freedom upon the philosophy of history, to which we shall presently give our special attention.

[21] De l’IdÉe de la Loi naturelle, Lecture IV., p. 29.

[22] Compare Janet’s remark, given on p. 136.

[23] Lecture XIII.

Instead of the ideal of science, a mathematical unity, experience shows us, Boutroux affirms, a hierarchy of beings, displaying variety and spontaneity—in short, freedom. So far, therefore, from modern science being an advocate of universal determinism, it is really, when rightly regarded, a demonstration, not of necessity, but of freedom. Boutroux’s treatment of the problem of freedom thus demonstrates very clearly its connection with that of science, and also with that of progress. It forms pre-eminently the central problem.

The idea of freedom is prominent in the “philosophy of action” and in the Bergsonian philosophy; indeed, Bergson’s treatment of the problem is the culmination of the development of the idea in Cournot, Renouvier and the neo-spiritualists. In Blondel the notion is not so clearly worked out, as there are other considerations upon which he wishes to insist. Blondel is deeply concerned with the power of ideals over action, and his thought of freedom has affinities to the psychology of the idÉes-forces. This is apparent in his view of the will, where he does not admit a purely voluntarist doctrine. His insistence on the dynamic of the will in action is clear, but he reminds us that the will does not cause or produce everything, for the will wills to be what is not yet; it strives for achievement, to gain something beyond itself. Much of Blondel’s treatment of freedom is coloured by his religious and moral psychology, factors with which Bergson does not greatly concern himself in his writings. Blondel endeavours to maintain man’s freedom of action and at the same time to remain loyal to the religious notion of a Divine Providence, or something akin to that. Consequently he is led to the dilemma which always presents itself to the religious consciousness when it asserts its own freedom—namely, how can that freedom be consistent with Divine guidance or action? Christian theology has usually been determinist in character, but Blondel attempts to save freedom by looking upon God as a Being immanent in man.

Bergson makes Freedom a very central point in his philosophy, and his treatment of it bears signs of the influence of De Biran, Ravaisson, Lachelier, Guyau and Boutroux. He rejects, however, the doctrine of finality as upheld by Ravaisson, Lachelier and Boutroux, while he stresses the contingency which this last thinker had brought forward. His solution of the problem is, however, peculiarly his own, and is bound up with his fundamental idea of change, or LA DURÉE.

In his work Les DonnÉes immÉdiates de la Conscience, or Time and Free-Will, he criticises the doctrine of physical determinism, which is based on the principle of the conservation of energy, and on a purely mechanistic conception of the universe. He here points out, and later stresses in his Matiere et MÉmoire, the fact that it has not been proved that a strictly determined psychical state corresponds to a definite cerebral state. We have no warrant for concluding that because the physiological and the psychological series exhibit some corresponding terms that therefore the two series are absolutely parallel. To do so is to settle the problem of freedom in an entirely a priori manner, which is unjustifiable.

The more subtle and plausible case for psychological determinism Bergson shows to be no more tenable than that offered for the physical. It is due to adherence to the vicious Association-psychology, which is a psychology without a self. To say the self is determined by motive will not suffice, for in a sense it is true, in another sense it is not, and we must be careful of our words. If we say the self acts in accordance with the strongest motive, well and good, but how do we know it is the strongest? Only because it has prevailed—that is, only because the self acted upon it, which is totally different from claiming that the self was determined by it externally. To say the self is determined by certain tives is to say it is self-determined. The essential thing in all this is the vitality of the self.

The whole difficulty, Bergson points out, arises from the fact that all attempts to demonstrate freedom tend only to strengthen the artificial case for determinism, because freedom is only characteristic of a self in action. He is here in line on this point with Renouvier and Boutroux, although the reasons he gives for it go beyond in psychological penetration those assigned by these thinkers. When our action is over, says Bergson, it seems plausible to argue a case for determinism because of our spatial conception of time and the relationships of events in time. We have a habit of thinking in terms of space, by mathematical time, not in real time or la durÉe as Bergson calls it, the time in which the living soul acts.

Bergson thus makes room in the universe for a freedom of the human will, a creative activity, and thus delivers us from the bonds of necessity and fatalism in which the physical sciences and the associationist psychology would bind us. We perceive ourselves as centres of indetermination, creative spirits. We must guard our freedom, for it is an essential attribute of spirit. In so far as we tend to become dominated by matter, which acts upon us in habit and convention, we lose our freedom. It is not absolute, and many never achieve it, for their personality never shines forth at all: they live their lives in habit and routine, victims of automatism. We have, however, Bergson urges, great power of creation. He stresses, as did Guyau, the Conception of Life, as free, expanding, and in several respects his view of freedom is closer to that of Guyau than to that of Boutroux, in spite of the latter’s contingency. There is no finalism admitted by Bergson, for he sees in any teleology only “a reversed mechanism.”

Obviously the maintenance of such a doctrine of freedom as that of Bergson is of central importance in any philosophy which contains it. Our conceptions of ethics and of progress depend upon our view of freedom. For Bergson “the portals of the future stand wide open, the future is being made.” He is an apostle of a doctrine of absolute contingency which he applied to the evolution of the world, in his famous volume L’Evolution CrÉatrice (published in 1907). His philosophy has been termed pessimistic by some in view of his rejection of any teleological conception. Such a doctrine would conflict with his “free” universe and his absolute contingency. On the other hand, it leaves open an optimistic view, because of its freedom, its insistence upon the possibilities of development. It is not only a reaction against the earlier doctrines of determinism, it is a deliverance of the human soul which has always refused, even when religious, to abandon entirely the belief in its own freedom.

Such is the doctrine of freedom which closes our period, a striking contrast to the determinism which, under the influence of modern science, characterised its opening. The critique of science and the assaults upon determinism proceeded upon parallel lines. In many respects they were two aspects of the one problem, and in themselves were sufficient to describe the essential development in the thought of our half century, for the considerations of progress, ethics and religion to which we now turn derive their significance largely from what has been set forth in these chapters on Science and Freedom.