Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/265

of freedom: for determinism the act is the resultant of a mechanical composition of the elements; for the adversaries of that doctrine, if they adhered strictly to their principle, the free decision would be an arbitrary fiat, a true creation ex nihilo.—It seemed to us that a third course lay open. This is to replace ourselves in pure duration, of which the flow is continuous and in which we pass insensibly from one state to another: a continuity which is really lived, but artifically decomposed for the greater convenience of customary knowledge. Then, it seemed to us, we saw the action issue from its antecedents by an evolution sui generis, in such a way that we find in this action the antecedents which explain it, while it yet adds to these something entirely new, being an advance upon them such as the fruit is upon the flower. Freedom is not hereby, as has been asserted, reduced to sensible spontaneity. At most this would be the case in the animal, of which the psychical life is mainly affective. But in man, the thinking being, the free act may be termed a synthesis of feelings and ideas, and the evolution which leads to it a reasonable evolution. The artifice of this method simply consists, in short, in distinguishing the point of view of customary or useful knowledge from that of true knowledge. The duration wherein we see ourselves acting, and in which it is useful that we should see ourselves, is a duration whose elements are dissociated and juxtaposed. The duration wherein we act is a duration wherein